Author: Moss, Thomas
Biography:
MOSS, Thomas (1739-1808: ODNB)
The Cambridge student register states that his father was Francis Moss, chandler and soap-boiler of Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. He was therefore possibly the Thomas Moss, baptised on 19 Nov. 1739 at St. Peter’s, Wolverhampton. His mother may have been the Susanna Chaplain who married a Francis Moss at St. Augustine’s, Rugeley, Staffordshire. He was educated in Wolverhampton and Rugeley before proceeding to Emmanuel College Cambridge (matric. 1757, BA 1761). He was ordained deacon (1762) and priest (1764). He was briefly curate at Uttoxeter and then Oldbury and Trentham (all Staffordshire) before his appointment as perpetual curate at Brierley Hill Chapel, Kingswinford, Staffordshire (1767-1808), which was largely primitive Methodist though still within the established church. He never married. He died at Stourbridge on 7 Dec. 1808. An edition of his Poems Upon Several Occasions (1827) was published by his nephew, Benjamin Guy Phillips, but had first appeared anonymously in 1769. The popular poem The Beggar’s Petition, sometimes set to music, was not widely known to be his until it was revealed in the GM in 1790. It had first appeared as “The Beggar” in the 1769 collection and was frequently reprinted anonymously or claimed by other people. Catherine Morland’s mother taught it to her as a young child (Northanger Abbey) so it may have been in the repertoire of sensibility of sensitive people. Dickens has a sobbing schoolboy rub his eyes with a copy of it (The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Ch. 4). (ODNB 12 Feb. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 12 Feb. 2023; Coventry Herald 16 Dec. 1808; GM Nov. 1790, 971-2, Dec. 1808, 1133; William Scott, Stourbridge And Its Vicinity [1832], 155-6) AA