Author: Jervis, Sophia
Biography:
JERVIS, Sophia, formerly KNELLER (1796-1834: ancestry.co.uk)
She was baptised Sophia Floyer Kneller on 29 Oct. 1796 at St. Mary’s, Donhead, the only daughter of John Kneller, a descendant of the painter Sir Godfrey Kneller, and his wife Sophia Hayne, who had married in 1791. The family lived at Donhead Hall, near Shaftesbury, in the country-house built, owned, and decorated by Sir Godfrey Kneller. She married William Paxton Jervis, a Lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards, on 11 Apr. 1814 at St. Marylebone, Westminster, with the permission of her guardians, Thomas Grove and her mother Sophia. She published Ines, and Other Poems (1816) anonymously but the presentation copy from her mother in the Bodleian Library (280.e.3851) has enabled identification. (The spelling Jervice was used by her mother in the presentation copy and has got into library catalogues, but her Hardwick marriage form and family usage was always Jervis.) It is a fifteenth-century Portuguese love story, one of several heroic maiden narratives clearly influenced by the Peninsula War (where her husband had seen action). She is not known to have published further. She went on to have three sons and a daughter. In Feb. 1833, her seventeen-year-old son William Godfrey Jervis was lost on the Erin steam packet, on his way to Ireland to join his regiment. She died on 1 May 1834 at Beech Hill House, Mayford, Woking, Surrey, and was buried at St. Peter’s, where there is a marble memorial tablet. (ancestry.co.uk 11 Feb. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 11 Feb. 2022; “Kneller, Sir Godfrey,” ODNB 11 Feb. 2022; London Magazine May 1791, 279; Windsor and Eton Express 10 Apr. 1814; Morning Post 21 Mar. 1833; Reading Mercury 12 May 1834; GM June 1834, 669) AA
Other Names:
- Sophia Jervice