Author: Hamley, Edward
Biography:
HAMLEY, Edward (1764-1834: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 25 Oct. 1764 at St. Columb, Cornwall, the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Hamley and his wife Mary Mant, who had married earlier that year. His mother was probably the elder sister of the Rev. Richard Mant, DD, and therefore the aunt of Alicia Catherine Mant and Richard Mant (qq.v.). He was educated at Winchester College under Joseph Warton (q.v.) and matriculated at New College, Oxford, in 1783 and was elected Fellow on 5 Nov. 1785. He proceeded to the BCL degree in 1791 and then went to the Inner Temple. At Oxford he was one of a group of young poets who gathered around Thomas Warton (q.v.) at Trinity and New College. Hamley’s forty untitled sonnets were first published in 1789 and reprinted in "a corrected second edition" included in Poems of Various Kinds (1795). Unlike some of his contemporaries, he managed to move on from antiquarianism and topography (often a strange conservative mix of personal memory and national history) to a personal encounter with contemporary politics with his "Verses to Liberty Occasioned by the French Revolution" (and the accompanying note). Several sonnets were reprinted in The Poetical Register (1806-07, 1808-09) together with a few original pieces. His poetic career appears to have stalled and he produced virtually nothing in the remaining thirty years of his life and left an unfinished "Greek Lexicon" at his death. He became Rector of Cusop, Herefordshire, in 1805 but soon returned to Oxford where he was Rector at St. John, Stanton, from 1806 until his death. He died 7 Dec. 1834 and was buried at St. John, Stanton, Oxfordshire. (ancestry.co.uk 9 Nov. 2020; findmypast.co.uk 9 Nov. 2020; ODNB 9 Nov. 2020 ; CCEd; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis [1874] 1: 206; T. F. Kirby, Winchester Scholars [1888].271; Reading Mercury 22 Dec. 1834; information from David Radcliffe) AA