Author: Layard, Charles Peter
Biography:
LAYARD, Charles Peter (1749-1803: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born 19 Feb. 1749 (1748 OS) and baptised at St. Anne’s, Soho, the son of Daniel Peter Layard, physician and man-midwife, who had qualified MD in Rheims in 1742, and his wife Susanne Henriette de Boisragon; they had married in 1743. He was educated at Huntingdon school and St. John’s College, Cambridge (BA 1770, MA 1773, DD 1787). He won the Seatonian Prize twice, in 1773 and 1775, with the poems listed here. (They were later reprinted in Musae Seatoniae (1808), also listed here. He was ordained priest in 1774 and thereafter was minister for many years at the Oxenden Chapel, London, then Vicar of Kewstock 1777-99 and Rector of Uffington 1798-1803. He was Prebendary of Bangor Cathedral 1799-1803. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1778. He married Elizabeth Ward on 1 Dec. 1777 at St. Martin’s in the Fields, Westminster. They went on to have twelve children. After her death in 1796, he married Elizabeth Carver on 24 Oct. 1798 at St. Nicholas, Rochester, Kent. He died on 11 Apr. 1803 in Bristol and was buried in the Cathedral where there is a memorial inscription. His eldest son, the Rev. Brownlow Villiers Layard (1779-1861) edited his Sermons(1804), which were very well subscribed and for which he was better known than for poetry during his lifetime. (ancestry.co.uk 3 Dec. 2021; Leeds Intelligencer 9 Nov. 1773, 7 Nov. 1775; OJ 16 Apr. 1803; GM May 1803, 481) AA