Author: Cromwell, Thomas
Biography:
CROMWELL, Thomas (1792-1870: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born in London on 14 Dec. 1792 and baptised at St. Sepulchre, London, on 10 Jan. 1793, the son of Elizabeth Kitson (b c. 1766) and her husband Thomas Cromwell. The baptismal record gives their address as Old Bayley (Bailey), London, but his father may have been from Ireland. Nothing is known about his education but ODNB states that at an early age he began working with the Longman publishing house. A play, Honour; or, Arrivals from College was performed at Drury Lane in Apr. 1819 and a few copies were privately printed; the manuscript survives in the Huntington Library. The Druid is dedicated to S. T. Coleridge (q.v.) with thanks for commenting on the manuscript in 1820; a letter from Coleridge to Cromwell, dated 20 Sept. 1821, includes advice about what is almost certainly this play. Cromwell married Mary Ward (b 1795) at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on 2 Nov. 1816. (ODNB erroneously identifies his wife as a daughter of Richard Carpenter.) They did not have children. Although Cromwell was baptised and married in the established church, he joined the Unitarian church in about 1830 and in 1838 he became the minister of the Unitarian chapel at Stoke Newington. He held this post until 1864 and also served as clerk to the parish commissioners in Clerkenwell. He became a member of the Society of Antiquaries in 1838. Towards the end of his life he moved to Canterbury and he died there on 22 Dec. 1870. He was buried in the non-conformist burial ground in Canterbury. Cromwell’s poems and plays belong to his youth; his later publications reflect his historical and topographical interests. His works include Excursions in the County of Essex (1818), Oliver Cromwell and his Times (1821, 1822), History and Description of the Ancient Town and Borough of Colchester (1825), Excursions Through Ireland (1820), History and Description of the Parish of Clerkenwell (1828), and Walks Through Islington (1835). The title page of his The Soul and Future Life (1859) identifies him as FSA and PhD; he had an honorary degree from the University of Erlangen in Bavaria. A pamphlet about the Unitarian church, Whither Are We Tending (1866), was his final publication. (ODNB 20 Mar. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 20 Mar. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 20 Mar. 2024; Kentish Gazette 27 Dec. 1870; E. L. Griggs, ed. Collected Letters of S. T. Coleridge 5 [1971], 178-79) SR