Author: Puddicombe, John Newell
Biography:
PUDDICOMBE, John Newell (b 1758: findmypast.com)
He was born in Dorset and baptised at Lyme Regis on 5 Feb. 1758, the son of John and Elizabeth (Newell) Puddicombe. His father was a chemist. Nothing is known of his schooling before he was admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, at the age of 15 on 24 Dec. 1774 (matric. 1775, BA 1778, MA 1781). He was ordained deacon in 1780 and priest in 1783, and held curacies in Axminster, Devon (1780), and at St. Ethelburga, City of London (1783), before being elected a Fellow of Dulwich College, where he remained as a teacher until his retirement in 1797. He appears not to have married. He contributed poems occasionally to newspapers. Besides the volumes of poems given here, he published a sermon delivered in 1782 and then a collection of sermons, by subscription, in 1786. The subscribers’ list reflects his shifting career, with London, Dulwich, Devon, and Cambridge prominently featured among the addresses, as well as Romford in Essex where his brother Thomas was a clergyman. There are no publications later than 1788 and 1797 is a rather early date for him to have given up teaching, but he may have suffered from ill health. No unquestionable record of his later life or death has yet been located but he might have been the John Puddicombe buried at Crediton, Devon, on 27 Jul. 1804. (findmypast.com 24 Nov. 2023; ACAD; CCEd 24 Nov. 2023; Chelmsford Chronicle 17 Aug. 1787; Cambridge Chronicle and Journal 7 May 1785)
Other Names:
- J. N. Puddicombe