Author: Cresswell, Henry
Biography:
CRESSWELL, Henry (1787-1849: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 14 Mar. 1787 and baptised on 20 Apr. at Bibury, Gloucestershire, the third of seven children of Estcourt Cresswell (1745-1823), owner of the Bibury estate, and Mary Gregory (1758-1815), who had married in 1781. His early education is not known but he proceeded to Wadham College, Oxford (matric. 1804, BA 1810), and entered the established church. He was ordained deacon in 1810 and then became curate of Malmesbury. He was vicar of St. Mary’s in the village of Creech St. Michael, near Taunton, 1813-49. He acquired a reputation for drinking copious amounts of gin at the local Bell Inn, fist-fighting, and engaging in the Somerset game of “cudgel,” where players beat each other with sticks on stage or in the town square. In 1845 he was prosecuted in the ecclesiastical court for “habitual swearing, the use of indecent language, and intoxication” and on 8 Mar. 1846 he was suspended for eighteen months with the further sanction that he needed three clergy to vouch for his good behaviour. He married Sophia Smith (1785/90-1873), the widow of Captain Thomas Wetherall Smith (who died in the West Indies in 1810), on 14 Mar. 1815 at St. Mary Magdalene, Taunton. They went on to have eight children. Henry Cresswell died suddenly on 2 Aug. 1849 at the vicarage and was buried at St. Mary’s. His brother, John Cresswell (1793-1851), succeeded him as vicar. Moscow; A Tragedy is his only known work. It was performed and printed in Taunton and first appeared anonymously in 1819 with a preface which he signed from the masonic Lodge of Perpetual Friendship no. 219. After his death, his widow, Sarah, moved to Notting Hill, London, to live with a married daughter and her family. She died there on 7 July 1873 but was buried at Creech St. Michael. (ancestry.co.uk 16 Feb. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 16 Feb. 2024; CCEd 16 Feb. 2024; OUCH 25 Mar. 1815; Dorset County Chronicle 8 May 1845; SJC 4 Nov. 1847; Bath Chronicle 9 Aug. 1849; Morning Post 10 July 1873) AA
Other Names:
- H. Cresswell