Author: Middleton, Stephen
Biography:
MIDDLETON, Stephen (1786-1843: findmypast.com)
No record has been found of his birth or baptism but ACAD identifies his family and in the 1841 Census he gave his year of birth as 1786. He was the son of Sarah (Wason) and John Douglas Middleton of Frome, Somerset, who had married on 22 June 1779. He matriculated belatedly as a “ten-year man,” aged 27, at St. Alban’s College, Oxford, on 10 Apr. 1813; was ordained deacon and priest in 1815; but left Oxford without a degree. He served as curate in Northamptonshire (1818) and in Devon (1822) but then went back to university. He migrated to Queens’ College, Cambridge, on 2 June 1825 and was granted a BD in 1826. On 22 Dec. 1831 he married Ann(e) Beckley at Lymington, Hampshire; they had at least five children. He was Rector of St. Michael and St. Peter, Stratton, Norfolk, 1836-8, but by the time of the 1841 Census was living in Cheltenham without a parish of his own. He died at his home, Douglas Lodge, Cheltenham, on 4 Oct. 1843, in his 59th year; his wife Ann was his sole executor. His only known publication, the collection of poems opening with “Pompeii,” arose out of a reading of that poem at a meeting of the Cheltenham Literary and Philosophical Institution. The volume is dedicated to the Duchess of Gloucester and the proceeds were to go to support the Cheltenham Female Orphan Asylum. (findmypast.com 10 June 2023; Alumni Oxonienses; ACAD; CCEd 10 June 2023; Saunders’s News-Letter 12 Oct. 1843; London Packet 26 Dec. 1831) HJ