Author: Martyn, Thomas
Biography:
MARTYN, Thomas (1736-1823: findmypast.com)
This versatile Thomas Martyn is to be distinguished from other, more respectable contemporaries of the same name, particularly the Cambridge botanist who was also a clergyman (1735-1825). This Thomas Martyn was identified as the author of the anonymous satire Drawings, from Living Models by a reviewer in the European Magazine who wrote admiringly of Martyn’s campaign in the courts to assert his rights as a curate against his rector, Richard Hind, whom he did succeed in driving out of his position at St. Anne’s, Soho, London. He was the son of Katherine and Roger Martyn, baptised on 9 Feb. 1836 at Awliscombe, Devon, where his father was the rector. He matriculated at Balliol, Oxford, in 1755 but did not proceed to a degree. Instead he eloped with Frances Beadon, daughter of another Devon clergyman, and married her in Guernsey in 1759. Her relative Samuel Squire, Bishop of St. David’s, secured him a place in the army, which however he left after the death of his patron in 1766. He was ordained deacon in 1767 and priest in 1768, and became curate at St. Anne’s. In 1780 he was involved with educational ventures—lectures and literary gatherings—organized at Carlisle House, Soho Square, by David Williams (1738-1816), radical dissenter and founder of the Literary Fund, who by that time was living with Martyn’s wife Frances (d 1812). In the 1790s Martyn appears to have turned to business ventures as a cutler and silversmith in London, but he was imprisoned in the Fleet for debt 1794-7 and again in 1799. With Williams’s help as proof-reader he wrote King of the Swindlers (1800) about the radical John King (1753-1823) and was found guilty of libel. In 1811 he became curate and later rector of Newhaven and Piddinghoe, Sussex. The death of his wife freed him to marry his longtime companion Elizabeth Banning at St. Marylebone, London, on 15 Apr. 1812. He died and was buried at Piddinghoe on 12 Apr. 1823; his wife survived until 1837. It is not known whether there were children with either wife. (findmypast.com 6 Apr. 2023; European Magazine 3 [1783], 368-9; “King of the Swindlers,” edpopehistory.co.uk; CCEd 6 Apr. 2023; ODNB 6 Apr. 2023 [Williams, King]; Alumni Oxonienses) HJ