Author: Robe, William Lamb
Biography:
ROBE, William Lamb (1732-1802: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 28 Nov. 1732 and baptised on 23 Dec. at St. James’s, Clerkenwell, London, one of at least eight children of Thomas Robe and his wife Martina Lamb, who had married at All Saints, Norwich, in 1725. He married Matilda Diotiguardi on 24 Feb. 1771 at St. Andrew’s Holborn. (He had addressed a poem, “The Compliment,” composed in 1750 [Poems on Various Subjects, 1824, p. 76] to A[nnabella?] Diotiguardi, who was Matilda’s sister. A note to the poem states that he “paid his addresses to another Young Lady.” If this was Matilda, the reasons for delaying the marriage until over twenty years later are unknown.) They went on to have two sons. They lived for long periods at Wacton Hall, Wacton, near Long Stratton, Norfolk, which was described as an estate in his will. They later moved to Newport Pagnell, where he died and was buried on 20 July 1802. His wife survived him and died in 1823. In April 1844 a number of newspapers reported the case of a vagrant clergyman who had been arrested for begging in Rochester, Croydon, and Greenwich. This was his son and editor, Rev. Francis William Robe (1771-1848) who had been educated at Lincoln College Oxford (BA 1793, MA 1796). He managed to avoid punishment by claiming he was engaged in raising door-to-door subscriptions for a third edition of his father’s poems (which never appeared). Since his father had left considerable wealth and property to his wife and sons, his descent into penury is a mystery. (ancestry.co.uk 21 May 2022; findmypast.co.uk 21 May 2022; GM July 1802, 692; Norfolk Chronicle 12 Apr. 1823; Globe 17 Apr. 1844) AA