Author: Holworthy, Samuel
Biography:
HOLWORTHY, Samuel (1785-1838: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 14 Mar. 1785 and baptised on 28 Mar. at St. James’s, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, the son of Lt. Samuel Holworthy of the 60th Regiment of Foot and Deborah Stephenson, who had married in Manchester in 1783. He was educated at Harrow and University College, Oxford (BA 1808, MA 1810), and then entered the church. He was Vicar of St. John the Baptist, Croxall, Derbyshire from 1809 until his death. He married Diana Sarah Bayly on 6 Apr. 1811 at Cheshunt, Herts. They went on to have five children. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Bayly, MP (1726-98), who had extensive plantation interests and owned slaves in Jamaica. She and her sisters received £40,000 each from his will. She was also the cousin of Bryan Edwards (q.v.). Holworthy died at Lansdowne Place, Bath, on 5 Mar. 1838 and was buried in Croxall. Poems, by a Clergyman (1821) has largely been forgotten but Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge (qq.v.), all possessed copies. It contains "Lines Written under Snowdon" and other topographical poems, "Sonnet to the Poet Wordsworth," and occasional and religious verse. Like many readers, he found in Wordsworth a supplement to faith, as indicated in his allusion to The Excursion in the preface to the volume: “Rapt into still communion, that transcends/The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, /His mind was a thanksgiving to the power /That made him" (vii). (ancestry.co.uk 13 May 2021; CCEd 13 May 2021; Lancaster Gazette 20 Apr. 1811; Bristol Mercury 10 Mar. 1838; GM Apr. 1838, 441; LBS (Nathaniel Bayly); "Bayly, Nathaniel," ODNB 13 May 2021; Romantic Circles, Southey Correspondence) AA