Author: Byerley, J. Scott
Biography:
BYERLEY, John Scott, pseudonym John Scott Ripon (1780-1837: Cartwright)
He was born on 16 Oct. 1780 at Brompton, near Northallerton in Yorkshire; his father was Thomas Byerley (1751-91) but his mother’s name is not known. A brother, Thomas, was born in 1788 and became an editor of various London periodicals. John Scott Byerley was educated at the Royal Free Grammar School in Northallerton before becoming clerk to William Walker, a solicitor. He subsequently moved to a similar position in Stockton-on-Tees where, according to Cartwright, he focused on studying mathematics and was invited to London by William Frend, the social reformer and actuary. In London he got into financial difficulties and was confined in the King’s Bench prison for debt. in 1805, 1807, and 1812. He married Harriet Cooksey, a sister of Richard Cooksey (q.v.), on 31 Aug. 1805 at St. Michael's, Worcester. Byerley sought to make a living by translating and writing; he published The Catastrophe…From the French of the Chevalier de St. Aubigné (1803), Buonaparte (1803: a play), Nature, or, A Picture of the Passions (1804), The Conscript, a Serio-Comic Romance (1807), Leopold de Circe, by Madame de Saint Venant (1807), and a translation of Machiavelli’s The Prince (1810). After Harriet's death in 1809, he entered into a marriage bond with Harriet Edward in 1813 and they were married at St. Faith Under St. Paul on 29 June 1814. They went to Paris where Byerley was made a knight of the Russian order of St. Vladimir by Emperor Alexander. In 1835 he patented the use of oleagine for the woollen industry. Byerley was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He died at Farm Hill, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, on 3 Jan. 1837. (ancestry.co.uk 18 Sept. 2023, 29 Apr. 2025; William Cartwright, Poets of Yorkshire [1845]; Mechanics’ Magazine 23 [1835], 60-61; GM 161 [1837], 331; Richard Vickerman Taylor, Anecdotæ Eborancenses [1883], 74-75) SR