Author: Heyrick, John
Biography:
HEYRICK, John (1762-97: ancestry.com)
First Flights was a posthumous production, proofread by the author but published by his friends, who attested in an Advertisement to his having been “a Man of superior talents, a Soldier of undaunted courage, and a Gentleman of unbounded liberality.” His own author’s note said that he had been in the habit of writing verses for his own amusement “from his earliest years.” The eldest son of John Heyrick and Mary Erpe, he was born in Leicester on 9 Jun. 1762 and baptised at St. Martin’s on 20 Jul. He had a classical education: his collection includes an imitation of Catullus. He enlisted in the army and had risen to the rank of Lieutenant in the 15th or King’s Regiment of Light Dragoons at the time of his death, aged 35. On 10 Mar. 1789 he married Elizabeth Coltman (“Eliza” in some of his poems) at Leicester. There do not appear to have been children. He died suddenly at his father’s house and was buried on 20 Jun. 1797 at St. Martin’s. The death notice quoted Sterne: Heyrick had been “‘well and dead in a minute;’—a melancholy instance of the instability of human life.” His wife did not remarry; she died in Leicester in 1831. (ancestry.com 31 May 2022; Derby Mercury 29 Jun. 1797)