Author: Budworth, Joseph
Biography:
BUDWORTH, Joseph, later Palmer (1756-1815: ODNB)
He was baptised at Manchester Cathedral on 3 June 1756. His parents were Joseph Budworth (d 1774) who kept the Bull’s Head Inn in Manchester, and his wife Frances Borbor (1722-91), the widow of Robert Chapman (d 1750). They had married in Manchester on 4 June 1754. The Rev. William Budworth, headmaster of Brewood School in Staffordshire, was an uncle. He entered the Manchester Grammar School in Jan. 1769. He joined the 72nd Regiment or Royal Manchester Volunteers and served as aide-de-camp to General Ross at the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) where he was wounded. He then briefly served as a cadet in the Bengal artillery and, during the French revolution, was a captain in the North Hampshire militia under Hans Sloane to whom he dedicated his Siege of Gibraltar. On 28 Mar. 1787 at St. James’s, Westminster, he married Elizabeth Palmer; they had one child, a daughter. Elizabeth was the sister of Roger Palmer of Rush, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and Palmerstown, Co. Mayo, Ireland, and on his death in 1811 Joseph Budworth succeeded to his estates and took the name Palmer. He contributed to GM as “A Rambler” and his most successful work was A Fortnight's Ramble to the Lakes in Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Cumberland (editions in 1792, 1795, 1810). Budworth was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He died at Eastbourne, Sussex, on 4 Sept. and was buried in the churchyard at St. Peter’s, West Molesey, Surrey, on 14 Sept. 1815. Elizabeth died on 31 May 1832. (ODNB 5 July 2023; ancestry.co.uk 5 July 2023; The Admission Register of the Manchester School [1866]; GM 85 [1815], 388-91; 102 [1832], 574)