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Author: Mayow, Robert Wynell

Biography:

MAYOW, Robert Wynell (1777-1817: ancestry.co.uk)

pseudonym Daniel Mendant

He was born on 8 Oct. 1777 at Saltash, Cornwall, the second son of John Salt Wynell Mayow (1747-1802) and his wife Mary Doughty (1743-1820) of Hamworth Hall, Norfolk. He was educated at Liskeard Grammar School and when his family moved to St. James’s Square, Bath, he was articled to an attorney there in 1794. He early developed a passion for poetry and like many others of the period he was greatly moved by William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729). He found legal work uncongenial and persuaded his father to allow him to go to Exeter College, Oxford (matric. 1797; BA 1801).  He then entered the established church, was ordained deacon (1801) and priest (1803), and took up the curacy of Weston in Bath and Wells, Somerset. He married Elizabeth Harding, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant, on 2 Oct. 1805 at Walton on the Hill, Lancashire. They had seven children, all of whom survived him. He held various curacies at Colerne, Rosthern, and Lathom (Lancashire), before becoming Curate of St. Thomas’s Chapel, Ardwick, near Manchester, three months before his death. Throughout his ministry he had a reputation for diligently attending to the poor, and his Plain Preaching: or, Sermons for the Poor, and for People of All Ranks (1816) was much admired locally. His play of 1809, an anomaly among his written works, was attributed to him during his lifetime by Watkins. He was taken ill after a visit to a poor parishioner and died on 8 Jan. 1817, aged 39. He was buried at St. Thomas’s three days later. His widow Elizabeth subsequently married Rev. John Morrall, and died at Whitchurch, Shropshire, in 1862. (ancestry.co.uk 2 Oct. 2022; “Memoir,” Sermons and Miscellaneous Pieces [1821], 1-95; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis [1874], 345; Gore’s Liverpool Advertiser 3 Oct. 1805; Bath Chronicle 4 Feb. 1802, 16 and 23 Jan. 1817, 10 Nov. 1825, 18 Dec. 1862; Norfolk Chronicle 12 Feb. 1820; Watkins) AA

 

Other Names:

  • Daniel Merdant
 

Books written (3):

London: Printed "for the Author"; sold by Longman and others, 1809
4th edn. London: Rivington; Crosby; Hatchard; Champante and Whitrow, 1811