Author: Crichton, Arthur
Biography:
CRICHTON, Arthur (1791-1825: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 22 Feb. 1791 and baptised on 23 Mar. at All Hallows, Tottenham (now north London), the eldest son of a Scottish-born army captain, John Crichton (1761-1852), and his wife Margaret (maiden name unknown) (1771-1858). The family later moved to Upper Gower Street, Bloomsbury, London. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College Cambridge (matric. 1808, BA 1812, MA 1816). He also entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1811 but was ordained deacon in the established church in 1816 and became curate of St. Leonard’s, Badlesmere, Kent (1818-25). He married Susan Sims (1801-23), eldest daughter of Rev. William Erratt Sims, on 29 Jan. 1823 at West Bergholt, Essex. She died later that year at Margate, on 12 Oct. There was no issue. He died on 10 Oct. 1825 in London and was buried at Badlesmere. Juvenilia (1812), which contained a topographical panegyric on John Pares’ seat at Grooby, Leicestershire, and a college exercise poem, “The Ruins of Rome,” are attributed to him on the bases of his initials, age, Cambridge residence, poems on flowers (which he later developed in The Festival of Flora), and the local printer in Tottenham Court Road, a stone’s throw from the family residence of Upper Gower Street. In addition to the works listed here he published a translation with a preface of Jean-Baptiste Massillon’s (1663-1742) A Plain and Popular Defence of the Worship of Jesus Christ (1824). (ancestry.co.uk 1 Feb. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 1 Feb. 2024; CCEd 1 Feb. 2024; H. E. C. Stapylton, The Eton School Lists, from 1791-1850 [1864], 56; MH 5 Feb. 1823, 12 Oct. 1825; GM Oct. 1825, 378; Ipswich Journal 18 Oct. 1823) AA