Author: Madan, Spencer
Biography:
MADAN, Spencer (1758-1836: ODNB)
The elder son of Rev. Spencer Madan (1729-1813), who became Bishop of Peterborough in 1794, and his first wife Charlotte Cornwallis (1725-94)--and thus the grandson of Judith Madan and nephew of Martin Madan (qq.v.)--was born at Fulford, Yorkshire, on 25 Aug. 1738. Like his father he was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge (matric. 1776, MA 1779, DD 1809), and became a clergyman. His Cambridge poem The Call of the Gentiles won the Seatonian Prize in 1782, the year of his ordination as deacon and then priest. In the same year he published an admired translation of Hugo Grotius, On the Truth of Christianity. The list of his appointments in the church is long and even CCEd acknowledges some confusion about them, stemming in part from his sharing his father’s name, but notable among them were overlapping livings as Rector of Ibstock, Leicestershire (1786-1836), Rector of St. Philip’s, Birmingham (1787-1809), chaplain in ordinary to the King (1788-1832), Rector of Thorpe Constantine, Staffordshire (1809-24), and Canon Residentiary of Lichfield Cathedral, Staffs. (1790-1810). During his time in Birmingham he was involved in controversy with Joseph Priestley: his published sermon against the dissenters prompted Priestley’s Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham (1790) to which Madan replied with an anonymous pamphlet, A Plain Caution to Every Honest Englishman (1793). On 5 Jan. 1791 he married Henrietta Inge of Thorpe Constantine, Staffordshire (1770-1816) at St. Mary, Lichfield; the couple went on to have eleven children. He was partially paralysed in 1833, presumably from a stroke, and died at the rectory of Ibstock on 9 Oct. 1836. He was buried along with his wife in the Inge family vault at Thorpe Constantine; there is a monument in Lichfield Cathedral, erected by their children. (ODNB 20 Feb. 2023; ancestry.com 20 Feb. 2023; CCEd 20 Feb. 2023; ACAD) HJ