Author: Duncan, John
Biography:
DUNCAN, John (1721-1808: ODNB)
He was born on 3 Nov. 1721 and baptised at St. Anne’s, Soho, Westminster, London, the second son of Dr. Daniel Duncan, clerk, and Mary (maiden name unknown), and grandson of the physician Daniel Duncan (1649-1735), of whom he contributed a long memoir to the Biographica Britannica (1793, 5: 492-500). He entered Merchant Taylors’ School, London, in 1733 and proceeded to St. John’s College, Oxford (matric. 1739, BA 1743, MA 1747, BD 1752, DD 1757), and was ordained deacon (1745) and priest (1746) in the established church. He served as chaplain with the King’s Own regiment in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-6 and later in the Mediterranean at the siege of St. Philip’s Castle, Minorca, in 1756. He held the college living of South Warmborough, Hampshire (1762-1808). He married Ellen Shute (1734-74) on 12 July 1763 at St. Swithin’s, Walcot, Somerset. She was independently wealthy and brought £6000 to the marriage. They went on to have two sons, John Shute Duncan (1769-1844) and Philip Bury Duncan (1772-1863), both of whom were educated at Oxford and became keepers of the Ashmolean Museum. He died at his house in Seymour Street, Bath, on 27 Dec. 1808, leaving an estate of over £12,700, excluding property. He had earlier collected much of his work in a sammelband, Miscellaneous Works, Theological, Critical, Moral, and Philosophical, in Verse and Prose (1793) which included the revised and enlarged second edition (1772) of An Essay on Happiness (1762) and Moral Hints to the Rising Generation(1783) together with sermons and other theological works, including the topical An Inquiry into the Moral and Religious Character of the Times (1788) and the long treatise The Evidence of Reason in Proof of the Immortality of the Human Soul (1779). The later poem listed here, The Plea for a Private Indulgence of Grief (1804) was originally written in Aug. 1774 and records his experience of the death of his wife, Ellen, who had died on 30 Mar. at South Warmborough. (ODNB 2 Jul. 2024 [grandfather, sons]; ancestry.co.uk 2 Jul. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 2 Jul. 2024; CCEd 2 Jul. 2024; Gloucester Journal 18 Jul. 1763; Bath Chronicle 28 Mar. 1793; GM Jan. 1809, 89; Charles J. Robinson, A Register of the Scholars admitted into Merchant Taylors’ School, from A.D. 1562 to 1874 [1883], 2: 82) AA