Author: Pye, Henry James
Biography:
PYE, Henry James (1745-1813: ODNB)
A lineal descendant of John Hampden, “the patriot,” Pye was born in London on 20 Feb. 1745, the eldest of the four children of Henry Pye (1709-1766), MP for Berkshire, and his wife, Mary (1717-1806), a daughter of the Rev. David James, of London, rector of Woughton-on-the-Green, Bucks. He was educated at home by tutors and then at Magdalen College, Oxford (Hon MA 1766, DCL 1772). Upon the death of his father, in Mar. 1766, Pye was forced to sell several properties to cover family debts, yet in Aug. of that year he held a “grand masque ball” in the Southampton assembly room for between three and four hundred persons. On 24 Aug. 1766, Pye married Mary (1745-1796), the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel William Hook(e) (d 1761), of Minstead, Hampshire. Henry and Mary had two daughters, Mary Elizabeth (q.v.), who married Captain John Jones of the 35th regiment (d in India, 1807), and Matilda Caroline (1775-1861). Matilda married Samuel James Arnold, a friend of Charles Lamb; he was a manager of Drury Lane theatre in succession to the father of James Henry Dodd (qq.v.). By his second wife, Martha (d 1861), Pye had two children, his heir, Henry John (1802-1884), and Jane Anne (1803-1880), who married Francis Willington (1800-1881), of Tamworth, Stafford. In 1784, government spent £2,500 on his election as MP of Berkshire. During his six years in Parliament, he cast a single vote. His Poems on Various Subjects, “Elegantly printed in 2 vols oct embellished with beautiful frontispieces,” published 7 Apr. 1787, was mainly a republication of several pieces printed between 1771 and 1784 (“deficient in … invention and spirit”—Annual Register 1788, 275). In 1799, government appointed him Poet Laureate. His magnum opus appeared in Apr. 1801, Alfred an Epic Poem (“rather an exemption from gross errors than an attainment of excellence”—MR 1802, 183), and, in May 1802, Verses Written in the Vicinity of Stoke Park (“[h]is fancy and learning give ornament to trifles”—Monthly Mirror 1802, 102). Walter Scott is said to have quipped that Pye was respectable in everything but his verse. He died at Pinner on 11 Aug. 1813. In 1820 and 1824, the RLF came to his daughter Mary’s relief with grants totaling £55. (ODNB 15 May 2023; ancestry.com 15 May 2023; RLF #311) JC
Other Names:
- H. J. Pye
- J. H. Pye