Author: Clarke, George Somers
Biography:
CLARKE, George Somers (1754-1837: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 2 May 1754 at All Hallows, Barking by the Tower, City of London, the son of Somers Clarke and his first wife Elizabeth Stevens, who had married at St. Clement Danes, Westminster, in 1744. He was educated at Trinity College Oxford (matric. 1774, BA 1778, MA 1781, BD 1789, DD 1803). Ordained deacon (1781) and priest (1782), he was curate at Cumnor near Oxford (1789-97). He was then given a college living as vicar of St. Mary and St. Lawrence, Great Waltham, Essex (1797-1837), where he married Dorothea Sophia Goodeve (1779-1862) on 22 Aug. 1797. They went on to have six children, with at least three predeceasing them. He was an accomplished classicist and translated Sophocles’s Oedipus, King of Thebes (1790), but was better known as a Hebrew scholar. His Hebrew Criticism and Poetry (1810) contained extended metrical translations. He became increasingly eccentric, frequently preaching to the congregation in Hebrew. He failed to submit to fines and punishment by the ecclesiastical court for a variety of offences: obstruction of divine worship, refusal to allow burials and baptisms, incontinence, brawling, stealing wine and collections, adultery and associating with prostitutes. He was suspended but still refused to co-operate and was finally imprisoned in Chelmsford Old Gaol for contempt of court on 22 May 1824. He decided he liked it there, went on translating the Old Testament, and rarely went home. He died in gaol on 4 Feb. 1837 and was buried at Great Waltham. (ancestry.co.uk 8 June 2023; findmypast.co.uk 8 June 2023; CCEd 8 June 2023; OJ 29 Jan. 1825; Huntingdon Gazette 11 Feb. 1837; Sherborne Mercury 13 Feb. 1837; GM Apr. 1837, 441) AA