Author: Lettice, John
Biography:
LETTICE, John (1737-1832: ODNB)
He was born on 27 Dec. 1737 and baptised on 25 Jan. 1738 at Rushden, Northamptonshire. His father John Lettice (1703-53) was vicar of Bozeat, Northamptonshire; his mother Mary (Newcome) Lettice was a clergyman’s daughter. Lettice was educated at Oakham School, Rutland, and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (matric. 1756, BA 1761, Fellow 1763, MA 1764, BD 1771, DD 1797) and was ordained deacon in 1761 and priest in 1764. But he did not take on parish duties until he was appointed vicar of Peasmarsh, Essex, in 1785. And although he published a small set of Love Elegies in 1760, he did not marry until 1786. He won the Seatonian Prize in 1765 for a poem on The Conversion of St. Paul. He had a busy life as a clergyman, author, and scholar. He went to Copenhagen in 1768 as chaplain and secretary to the British embassy. In 1777 he was employed as tutor to William Beckford (1760-1844) and travelled with him on the Continent several times in the next five years. He had a gift for languages and collaborated in the translation of The Antiquities of Herculaneum from Italian (1773); the poem On the Immortality of the Soul (1795) was from Latin. He first married Ann Newling at All Saints, Cambridge, on 3 Oct. 1786; they had one daughter, Ann Francis. After the death of his wife in 1788 he married Ann Hinckley on 25 May 1789 at St. Mary the Virgin, Shenfield, Essex; their daughter Laetitia-Sabrina was baptised at Hammersmith on 12 Oct. 1790. In 1804 he was made a prebendary of Chichester Cathedral, and in 1810 domestic chaplain to the Marquess of Douglas and Clydesdale. Besides the works already mentioned or listed here, he published sermons, wrote about his travels in Scotland in 1792 (1794), made a proposal for evacuating coastal areas in case of invasion (1803), and recommended improvements to “Clerical Elocution” (1822). He died at his vicarage at Peasmarsh on 18 Oct. 1832 and was buried there on Oct. 26. (ODNB 7 Jan. 2024; ancestry.com 7 Jan. 2024; findmypast.com 7 Jan. 2024; GM Nov. 1832, 477-80; CCEd 7 Jan. 2024; ACAD; information from AA)