Author: Holme, James
Biography:
HOLME, James (1779-1848: findmypast.com)
Rev. James Holme, not to be confused with Rev. James Holme (1801-82, q.v.), was a clergyman and a lively satirist, the author of at least six substantial works between 1812 and 1824. The son of Mary (Dawson) and John Holme, he was baptised on 4 Mar. 1779 at Askham, Westmoreland. It is possible that he was the James Holme of Ealing, Middlesex, who served as Upper Master at the grammar school in Blackburn, Lancashire, between 1803 and 1807. He matriculated at St. Alban Hall, Oxford, in 1808; though he did not proceed to a degree, he was ordained as “literate” in 1809, at which point he served as an army chaplain during the disastrous Walcheren expedition in Belgium. In 1811 he was appointed curate of St. Anne, Soho, London, and in 1815 of Sandiacre, Derbyshire; CCEd does does not record either his origins or his later appointments. In 1812, Religionism announced as imminently forthcoming Enchiridion Clericum, which did duly appear, and three other titles which did not. An avid seeker of publicity, Holme complained in the preface to Vulpina about the lack of reviews of his work and sought other outlets: a sermon on the death of Princess Charlotte was published by his parishioners at Southminster, Essex, in 1817, and he contributed a similarly solemn poem on the death of his only child to the Sun of London in 1818. That child was almost certainly James Harrington Holme, buried at Southminster on 2 Apr. 1818, aged 9 weeks—which fact allows the poet to be identified as the James Holme who married Charlotte Harrington at her home parish of Duffield, Derbyshire, on 15 May 1815. His poems were sometimes advertised in London papers; the last, on Chancery, had a withering review in the Literary Chronicle in 1824. An application for funds to the RLF was unsuccessful. At that point Holme appears to have given up his literary ambitions. He and his wife are recorded as residents of York Square, St. Pancras, London, in the 1841 Census. He died in the same parish in 1848. (findmypast.com 8 Oct. 2022; ancestry.com 8 Oct. 2022; CCEd 7 Oct. 2022; London Courier 19 Dec. 1817; Literary Chronicle [1824], 523; Sun [London] 30 Jul. 1818; RLF #512; contributions by AA) HJ