Author: Procter, William
Biography:
PROCTER, William (1790-1853: ancestry.com)
Internal evidence suggests that the author of Rosamund, Memory’s Musings, and Other Poems was educated, a Londoner, and young. There is a Latin epigraph from Ovid; there are familiar references to London landmarks such as Kensington Gardens; and the poems celebrate sentiment, beauty, and love. The book is dedicated to the Rector of Stanmore (in Harrow, London), the Reverend Arthur Robinson Chauvel, LLB, who was also a prebendary at St. Paul’s. Procter was born at Pinner, Middlesex (now in Harrow), on 7 Nov. 1790 and baptised there on 11 Nov., the son of Elizabeth and James Procter. He was employed at the War Office in London before his marriage to Susanna or Susannah Badcock at Bledlow, Buckinghamshire, on 7 May 1817; they went on to have at least four children. He entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1818 as a ten-year man and is recorded as having taken classes in civil law 1828-29, but not as having taken a degree. There is no record of ordination in CCEd but he must have been ordained at some point since he became a curate at Elvington, Yorkshire, where his son was born in 1833 and where the family stayed until 1841. He then became vicar of Bishop Burton, Yorkshire, from 1842 until his death on 18 May 1853. He is sometimes confused with William Procter (1791-1839), a Yorkshireman who graduated BA from St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, in 1813 and had a more conventionally successful clerical career. There are no other known publications. (ancestry.com 20 Nov. 2023; findmypast.com 20 Nov. 2023; ACAD; LES 28 May 1853)