Author: Cole, Thomas
Biography:
COLE, Thomas (1726-96: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 26 May 1726 at Piddlehinton, Dorset, the son of John Cole and Rachel (maiden name unknown) Cole. He was educated at Eton (1740-45) and Queens’ College, Cambridge (matric. 1745, LLB 1751). He was assistant preacher at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, London (1753-63), and whilst there published Discourses on Luxury, Infidelity, and Enthusiasm (1761). He then became vicar at Holy Trinity, Dulverton, Somerset (1763-96). He married Sarah Niccoll (variant spellings) on 20 Oct. 1763 at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. They had two sons, both born at Dulverton. She may been the Sarah Cole who died in Dec. 1781 and was buried at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. His will mentions a second marriage to Jane (maiden name unknown) with whom he appears to have had another son. She may have died in Westminster in 1797 or 1799. He died at his house in Abingdon Street, Westminster, and was buried on 10 June at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, leaving an estate of over a thousand pounds and property to his wife and children. David Rivers commented that The Life of Hubert (1795), the first of thirteen projected books, “we may safely predict will not immortalize the poet.” Only two further books were published, posthumously, in 1797. In addition to the verse listed here, a poem, The Arbour: or The Rural Philosopher (1756), was published by Robert Dodsley, who reprinted it in the sixth volume of his Collection of Several Poems (1766) together with “The Grotto: An Ode to Silence.” They were later reprinted by Robert Southey in Specimens of the Later British Poets (1807), 3: 419-24. (ancestry.co.uk 7 Dec. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 7 Dec. 2023; CCEd 7 Dec. 2023; R. A. Austen-Leigh, The Eton College Register 1698-1752 [1927], 77; Kentish Gazette 17 June 1796; EM June 1796, 431; GM June 1796, 532; Rivers, 1: 104) AA