Author: Mundy, Francis Noel Clarke
Biography:
MUNDY, Francis Noel Clarke (1739-1815: ancestry.com)
The son of Anne (Burdett) and Wrightson Mundy, he was born at Odbaston Hall, Leicestershire, on 15 Aug. 1739. His father was the local MP and both sides of the family had aristocratic ancestors. Heir to the family estate of Markeaton, Derbyshire, he was educated at Repton School, Winchester School, and New College, Oxford (matric. 1757, MA 1761). In 1762-3, perhaps to celebrate his coming of age, he commissioned a series of portraits—his own among them--from Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97) to hang at Markeaton. His first collection of verse, the privately-printed Poems (1768), includes pieces composed or at least started at both schools, so it is clear that poetry was a lifelong pastime. On 17 June 1770 he married Elizabeth Burdett (1741-1807) at Foremark, Derbyshire; they had two sons. (There was apparently also an earlier marriage in the West Country, proved by a marriage record for Francis Noel Clarke Mundy and Betty Ayrton who married at Clifton, Gloucestershire, on 6 July 1767, and a baptismal record for Renatus Mundy, son of Elizabeth Mundy--with no father named--in the parish of Mullion, Cornwall, on 30 Dec. 1767. A Betty Mundy was buried on 1 July 1768 at Hinton Charterhouse, Somersetshire, and Renatus Mundy on 7 June 1771 at Mullion.) Mundy declined to be MP for his county but was elected High Sheriff in 1772 and served as a magistrate for almost fifty years. In 1776 he produced the work for which he was best known, Needwood Forest, to celebrate the pleasures of the ancient woodland not far from Derby, where he loved to hunt. The forest was under threat of enclosure. Anna Seward, Erasmus Darwin, Brooke Boothby (qq.v.), and Erasmus Darwin Jr. contributed short complimentary verses to the volume; Seward tried to persuade Mundy to publish it rather than simply having copies printed for friends. After the Enclosure Act of 1803 the forest was destroyed; there is now (2023) a campaign to replant and restore it. Mundy died at Markeaton on 23 Oct. 1815; the magistrates of Derbyshire commissioned a bust by Francis Chantrey for the county hall, with a plaque extolling his personal and civic character. (Through his mother, Mundy was an uncle of Henry Ware, [q.v.].) (ancestry.com 20 July 2023; findmypast.com 20 July 2023; “Francis Noel Clarke Mundy,” Wikipedia 20 July 2023; Alumni Oxonienses; London Gazette 1772) HJ
Other Names:
- F. N. C. M.
- F. N. C. Mundy