Author: Glasse, Francis
Biography:
GLASSE, Francis (1782-1856: ancestry.co.uk)
pseudonym Britannicus
Born in London on 17 Sept. 1782 and baptised at St. Marylebone on 29 Sept., he was the son of Richard Glasse and his wife Lydia Owen who had married in Bristol on 14 Jan. 1761. Nothing is known about his education but he is recorded as becoming an ensign “by purchase” in the 25th Regiment of Foot in 1801. By the time of the Peninsular War he was a captain in the 95th Regiment and he would have served at Waterloo if he had not been detached as a deputy judge advocate. His books, particularly his fiction, draw on his experiences in Europe. He married Eliza Stimpson at St. Marylebone on 20 Oct. 1806; they had a son and a daughter. She was the sister of William Stimpson, owner of the Java estate in Jamaica, and inherited an annuity from him. Their son, Francis Philip Glasse (b 1807), inherited the estate from his uncle but died in Jamaica in 1837. Eliza died in about 1844 and Glasse remarried, probably in France; his wife, Annette, is listed as living with him in census records for 1841 and 1851. In 1841 he was on half-pay and they were living in Southwark; in 1851 they lived in Lambeth. On 23 Aug. 1853 he married for a third time, to Ann Adames at St. Mary, Lambeth. (The marriage certificate gives the groom's father's name as Francis but this is almost certainly a clerical error.) He died at Boulogne, France, on or about 26 Oct. 1856 (that may be the date of his burial in Boulogne). Glasse had made a will on 6 Sept. 1853, leaving his estate to Ann Adames Glasse, but she had failed to administer the will by the time of her own death in 1861. His other publications include Ned Clinton, or, The Commissary (1825), Joe Oxford, or, The Runaway (1830), and Memoirs of Andrew Winpenny (1841). He also issued two works in parts: Love’s Mirror (1842) and Osmyn the Unknown (1847). The Siege of Missolonghi, issued as by “Britannicus,” is attributed to him, probably on the basis of the two references in the poem to his Belgic Pastorals (canto 1, stanzas 20 and 42). (ancestry.co.uk 18 Sept. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 18 Sept. 2024; LBS)
Other Names:
- F. Glasse