Author: Lucas, John
Biography:
LUCAS, John (fl 1774-81)
On the title-page of his Miscellanies in Verse and Prose, John Lucas identifies himself as a cobbler (“Cobler”) and as “a Pensioner in Trinity Hospital, Salisbury.” The Hospital, founded in the fourteenth century and still in operation, was an almshouse with a limited number of beds for permanent residents and a slightly larger number for short-term “strangers.” The Miscellanies, published by subscription with an impressively wide-ranging and socially inclusive list of almost 30 pages of names, includes Lucas’s only known earlier composition, the broadside An Invitation (1774)--which identifies him however as “a pauper Cordwainer.” Evidently he was admitted as a Pensioner after 1774. The contents of this and his final publication of 1781 reveal little about his personal life. In the person of “Philo,” Lucas acknowledges his lack of learning but considers it made up for by divine grace and poetic inspiration (his Muse), and the poems though unpolished are not unsophisticated. There are some references to his poverty and his advanced age and some to true or false friends, but none to a wife or family. If he was a native of Salisbury he might have been the John Lucas, son of John and Anne Lucas, who was baptised at St. Edmund’s on 6 July 1705, who might or might not be the same person as the John Lucas buried at St. Edmund’s on 23 July 1786, but the name is not uncommon and he could have come to the city from elsewhere. (Another John Lucas, son of Martha and Thomas Lucas, was baptised at St. Edmund’s on 5 Feb. 1725.) (Goodridge; ancestry.com 2 Feb. 2024; findmypast.com 2 Feb. 2024; salisburyhealthcarehistory.uk) HJ