Author: Headlam, John
Biography:
HEADLAM, John (1818-71: ancestry.com)
He was born in Wycliffe, Yorkshire, and baptised on 27 Sept. 1818, the second son of the Rev. John Headlam (1771-1854), Archdeacon of Richmond, and his wife Maria Morley (1788-1863). He first attended the newly founded Durham University, where he won the 1834 prize for an English poem with The Discovery of America, and then followed his father and brother to Cambridge. He was admitted to Caius College in 1837 but migrated to Pembroke in the same year. He had a distinguished academic career (BA 1841, Wrangler; Tyrwhitt Hebrew Scholar 1844; MA 1844) but does not appear to have published on scholarly or other topics later. At some point he took orders (but is not registered in CCEd): in the 1851 Census he is described as Curate of Wycliffe and in 1861, when he was living in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, he identified himself as a clergyman “without cure of souls.” The family was prosperous and he did not need to work for a living. By 1871, by which time he was living as the head of the household with his two slightly older sisters and three servants in Brighton, Sussex, he gave his occupation as “M. A., Owner of Real Property” and the sisters’ as “Annuitant and Shareholder.” He is said to have converted to the Roman Catholic Church toward the end of his life. He died unmarried in Brighton in Apr. 1871 and does not appear to have had a parish burial. (ancestry.com 31 Mar. 2022; Durham University Calendar, with Almanack [1876], 247; ACAD; Morning Advertiser 21 Apr. 1871)