Author: Macaulay, Thomas Babington
Biography:
MACAULAY, Thomas Babington (1800-59: ODNB)
Thomas Babington Macaulay was born into an extended family of philanthropists and reformers. His father Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838) and his uncle Thomas Babington (1758-1837) were leading abolitionists. His mother Selina Mills (d 1831) was the daughter of a Quaker bookseller in Bristol and a friend of Hannah More (q.v.). Their first child was born at his uncle’s estate of Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, on 25 Oct. 1800. The family settled in Clapham, London, where eight more children were born. A prodigy who could read fluently at the age of three, Thomas went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of 16 (Pensioner 1817, matric 1818, BA 1822, MA 1825, Fellow 1824-52) and from there to Lincoln’s Inn (1822). The poems in this bibliography were all Cambridge prize poems. He was called to the bar in 1826 but never practiced law. His family expected him to go into politics, as he eventually did, but his first love was literature and his first fame came as a reviewer for ER (from Jan. 1825). He did hold a government appointment as a commissioner for bankruptcy briefly before he was elected MP (Calne 1830-1, Leeds 1831-4). He went to India as a colonial administrator 1834-8; there his sister Hannah More Macaulay, who had accompanied him, married Charles Edward Trevelyan (1807-86). Following an extended trip to Italy he was returned to parliament as MP for Edinburgh (1839-47, 1852-6) and served in cabinet as Secretary at War in 1839. But his aim was to combine public life with writing. Lays of Ancient Rome appeared to general acclaim in 1842 and a selection of his ER essays, Critical and Historical Essays, in 1843. The first two volumes of his History of England were published in Dec. 1848, with two more in Dec. 1855. He retired from parliament in Jan. 1856, bought his first house—Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, Kensington, London—and accepted a seat in the Lords as Baron Macaulay of Rothley. He had however suffered his first heart attack in 1852 and a second one ended his life on 28 Dec. 1859. He died at home in his study, it is said with the first number of the Cornhill Magazine open on his lap, and was buried in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, on 9 Jan. 1860. His wealth at death was under £70,000. (ODNB [Macaulay father and son; Babington; Trevelyan] 2 Feb. 2023; ACAD; findmypast.com 2 Feb. 2023)