Author: Gresley, Roger
Biography:
GRESLEY, Roger (1799-1837: ODNB)
He was born on 27 Dec. 1799 and baptised on 3 Jan. 1800 at Church Gresley, Derbyshire, the son of Sir Nigel Bowyer Gresley (1753-1808), 7th baronet, of Drakelow Park, Burton Upon Trent, Staffordshire, and his second wife, Maria Eliza Garway (1771-1840). In 1808 he succeeded his father as 8th baronet but was made a ward of Chancery with his mother and uncle disagreeing over his education. His uncle wanted to send him to Westminster but his mother prevailed and he was educated at home. He proceeded to Christ Church Oxford (matric. 1817) but took no degree. While there he published the poem listed here and then travelled abroad, particularly in Italy, where he developed a life-long hostility to Roman Catholicism. On his return to England he married Lady Sophia Catharine Coventry (1801-75), the youngest daughter of George William Coventry, 7th Earl of Coventry, on 2 June 1821. They had a daughter, Sophia Editha, who died in infancy in 1823, a month after her birth. His mother had opposed his marriage and this together with her debts and eccentric behaviour led him to have her declared a lunatic in 1826. He lived beyond his means for most of his life. He failed to be elected MP for Lichfield, Staffordshire, in 1826 but was successfully elected at Durham City in 1830 and New Romney, Kent, in 1831. He failed to be elected in South Derbyshire in 1832, succeeded in 1835, but early death curtailed his never very successful political career. He was groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of Sussex, captain of the Staffordshire yeomanry cavalry, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He was a moderate conservative but hostile to Catholic Emancipation, and published several pamphlets against it, also a tale on the corruption of contemporary Rome, Sir Philip Gasteneys(1829), with a further attack in the essay, The Life and Pontificate of Gregory the Seventh(1832). In 1836 he fell from his horse and became paralysed and never recovered. He died on 12 Oct. 1837 at Drakelow House and was buried at Church Gresley, Derbyshire. (ODNB 25 Oct. 2024; DNB; historyofparliamentonline.org; GM Dec. 1837, 649-50; Falconer Madan, The Gresleys of Drakelowe [1899], 124-8; ancestry.co.uk 25 Oct. 2024; OUCH 21 Oct. 1837; Personal papers, Derbyshire Record Office, D77/4/13) AA