Author: GUMLEY, Isaac
Biography:
GUMLEY, Isaac (1754-1824: ancestry.co.uk)
A smallholder and framework knitter in Countesthorpe, Leicestershire, he had a surprisingly common name: there were Isaac Gumleys in both Warwickshire and London. However, a local history included on the Countesthorpe parish council website confirms that the Leicestershire Isaac Gumley was the author of Mental Recreations. The same local history identifies him as a nephew of Isaac and Bathsheba Gumley but public records indicate that he was in fact their son, baptised on 1 Dec. 1754. Isaac Gumley (b 1710) had married Bathsheba Lord (b 1712) in Countesthorpe on 31 Dec. 1744; the Gumleys were a well-established family in the village and had connections to the Baptist chapel there. Nothing is known about Isaac’s education but he began contributing verse to newspapers and periodicals in about 1771 and a number of the poems in his Mental Recreations were previously published. He was befriended and helped by the Rev. John Mastin (1747-1829), a Countesthorpe landholder and vicar of Naseby, Northamptonshire. In his autobiography Mastin remembered Gumley as “a self-taught genius, a good poet and mathematician” and likely he was one of the poet’s friends who, according to the preface, not only encouraged Gumley to publish Mental Recreations but also organised the extensive subscription list. Subscribers were mainly from Leicester and Northampton. Gumley contributed the “Address to the Author” in Miscellaneous Poems by the Northampton poet Benjamin West and one of the poems in Mental Recreations is “On the Death of Mr. Charles Rozzel of Leicester (qq.v.). He may have been the Isaac Gumley who married Mary March (b 1755) in Countesthorpe on 1 Dec. 1776; one of the witnesses, William Ford, was a subscriber to Mental Recreations. He died on 4 Nov. 1824; the death notice erroneously gives his age as 80. He was said to be “much respected by his friends and acquaintances” but there is no mention of a widow and—if indeed he was married—she may have predeceased him. A notice in GM stated that “his productions always had a good tendency; they were not inimical to religion.” (ancestry.co.uk 1 Nov. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 1 Nov. 2024; ODNB [for John Mastin] 1 Nov. 2024; CCEd 1 Nov. 2024; countesthorpeparishcouncil.co.uk 1 Nov. 2024; GM 94 [1824], 477; C. Vialls and K. Collins, eds., A Georgian County Parson: The Rev. John Mastin of Naseby [2004]; death notice from AA) SR