Author: Neale, Cornelius
Biography:
NEALE, Cornelius (1789-1823: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 12 Aug. 1789 and baptised on 28 Aug. at St. Gregory by St. Paul, City of London, the youngest son of James Neale (1739-1814), a porcelain manufacturer and one of the founders of the London Missionary Society, and his second wife Elizabeth Simpson (1744-1818), who had married at Sherrif Hales, Shropshire, in 1780. In all James Neale had fourteen children, seven from each marriage, with none surviving past the age of thirty. Cornelius was tutored by the Rev. John Simons, Rector of St. Paul’s Cray, Kent, and frequently engaged in the open-air reading then in vogue: “our favourite Scadbury Wood, with Milton, Shakespeare, Pope, or Cowper in our hands” (Jowett, 17). He then proceeded to St. John’s College, Cambridge (matric. 1808, BA 1812, MA 1815, Fellow 1812-17) where he won the Smith’s Prize for mathematics and a Chancellor’s Medal for classics. After Cambridge, he spent some time tutoring his nephews, living variously at Lewisham, Penge, Eastbourne, and Southend. He was ordained in 1822 and appointed Curate of Mildenhall, Suffolk (which he only attended at weekends). He married Susanna Hope (1789-1860), eldest daughter of John Mason Hope, MD, on 3 Sept. 1816 at St. Mary’s, Lewisham, Surrey (now South London). They had one son and three daughters. As his health declined, they moved to Battersea in 1822 to be nearer his father-in-law who supervised his treatment. Three months before his death, they moved to Chiswick, where he died from consumption on 8 Aug. 1823, and was buried at St. Nicholas. Susannah Neale and his old college friend Thomas Grinfield (q.v.) contributed to Jowett’s Memoir (1833). She subsequently moved to Shepperton to place their only son, John Mason Neale in tuition. He went to Trinity College Cambridge and won the Seatonian Prize eleven times. (ancestry.co.uk 22 May 2022; findmypast.co.uk 22 May 2022; CCEd 22 May 2022; “Neale, John Mason,” ODNB 22 May 2022; Morning Chronicle 4 Sept. 1816; Cambridge Chronicle 22 Aug. 1823; GM Nov. 1823, 475; William Jowett, Memoir of the Rev. Cornelius Neale, M.A. . . . To which are added his Remains [1833]) AA
Other Names:
- C. Neale