Author: Cotes, Henry
Biography:
COTES, Henry (1759-1835: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 25 Apr. 1759 and baptised at Sherborne, Dorset, the son of Rev. Edward Cotes (1724-80), rector of Bishop’s Candel and vicar of Sherborne, and his wife Ann Hosey (1721-76) who had married in 1753. He was educated at University College Oxford (matric. 1777, BA 1781) and was ordained deacon (1782) and priest (1783) in the established church. He was appointed curate in 1783 at Colehill, Warwickshire, where he later married Frances Barker (1757-1836) on 23 Feb. 1789. They went on to have at least six children. In 1788 the Dean and Chapter of Durham presented him to the rectorship of Bedlington, Northumberland, where he remained until his death. He died on 8 Feb. 1835 and was buried at St. Cuthbert’s, Bedlington. Two sons, William and Henry, entered the Bengal Army/East India Company. He probably edited his son William Cotes’s (q.v.) poem India: A Poem in Four Cantos (1812) and his own poem, “A Father’s Letter to his Son” in Metres, Addressed to the Lovers of Truth, Nature and Sentiment (1809) might be considered a companion piece. He was best known during his lifetime as “Philatheles,” author of Sketches of Truth; Moral and Religious (Newcastle 1808), although he was widely known to be the author as the review in the Anti-Jacobin Review (June 1809, 132-37) clearly indicates. Besides the usual array of sermons, he also adapted a Catholic hymnal for protestants: A Selection of Hymns and Meditations (Newcastle 1791). He also contributed to Thomas Bewick’s British Water Birds (1805) and had extensive antiquarian interests. (ancestry.co.uk 1 June 2023; findmypast.co.uk 1 June 2023; CCEd 1 June 2023; Newcastle Journal 14 Feb. 1735, 14 May 1836; GM Apr. 1835, 442) AA