Author: MESSING, Stephen
Biography:
MESSING, Stephen (1765-1831: ancestry.co.uk)
He was the youngest of at least nine children of John Messing (1722-1792) and his wife Sarah Bains (1724-1791) who had married in 1746. His father was Steward to the Earl of Gainsborough who also employed Stephen as his valet and his brother John as Land Agent. Although Stephen Messing received “a plain education in a country village” (Rural Walks), the family was not poor. His mother left her children £10 each when she died in 1791 and his father left them £70 each the following year. Ornate gravestones in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul, Exton, also indicate some wealth. He published two collections, Rural Walks; or, Poems on Various Subjects (Stamford 1819) and Poems on Various Subjects, Written in the Years 1819 and 1820 (Stamford 1821). John Clare (q.v.) owned copies. Both volumes had been printed for the author by John Drakard (1775-1854), radical, printer, and newspaper proprietor. They were well subscribed for, possibly due to Gainsborough patronage, but are mostly undistinguished. However, they do give descriptions of rural activities: sheepshearing, shooting, fishing, felling of trees, and cricket matches. He died, aged 66, on 26 Jan. 1831, at Langham near Oakham, and is buried with his parents in Exton. (ancestry.co.uk 28 Sept. 2020; Stamford Mercury 28 Jan. 1831; findagrave.com 28 Sept. 2020; Catalogue of the John Clare Collection [Northampton Public Library 1964], item 300, p. 30; John Clare, John Clare by Himself [1996] 187) AA
Other Names:
- S. Messing