Author: Rolt, Richard
Biography:
ROLT, Richard (1724-1770: ODNB)
pseudonym Ben Sedgley
The only surviving child in a family of four boys, he was baptized at St Mary, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 6 Nov. 1724, the son of Richard Rolt (d 1739), a barber-surgeon, and his wife, Mary Davies (bap. 1698). His early education was under the Rev. Leonard Hotchkis at the Shrewsbury Royal Free Grammar School. The husband of his father’s cousin Mary Rolt, MP John Orlebar, arranged employment for him in 1744 at the Excise where Orlebar was a commissioner. He lost that position over his support of the Young Pretender. Another patronage appointment followed in 1745, this time at the Dublin office of the register of the prerogative court of Ireland headed by his maternal relative the poet Ambrose Philips. When they returned to England in 1748, Philips introduced him to Whig political patrons and arranged his articling to attorney William Harborne of Portugal Street. Though he entered Clement’s Inn (16 Aug. 1753), he never passed the bar. His first wife, Anne (surname at birth unknown), whom he married in about 1747, died at Islington 22 Feb. 1755. None of their four children reached adulthood. One of his sons, Benoni, evidently was named for Benoni Rolt (d 1763), a shipwright resident at Stepney, Tower Hamlets, who was probably the poet’s uncle or cousin. He married, secondly, Mary Perrins in 1756. They had a single surviving child. By 1753 he was a much-published, eclectic writer, the author of poems, polemical essays, libretti, and histories. He wrote a column, “The Midwife’s Politicks: Or, Gossip’s Chronicle of the Affairs of Europe,” for The Midwife; or the Old Woman’s Magazine, and contributed to several other serial publications, the Westminster Journal, Universal Visiter (sic), and Owen’s Weekly Chronicle. He wrote the libretti for three operas, composed skits and songs for performance at Vauxhall Gardens, Sadler’s Wells, and the Drury Lane theatre, and issued, among several other works, A New and Accurate History of South America (1756); The History of the Late War (1766); and, for children, A New History of France (1755). William Kenrick (q.v.) gave him an unkind nickname, “Dull Rolt.” The writer died at his residence in Ebury Row, Five Fields, Chelsea, on 2 Mar. 1770, and was buried on 11 Mar. at St Martin-in-the Fields. (ODNB 30 Apr. 2024; GM 25 [June 1755], 277; European Magazine [1803], 98–100) JC
Other Names:
- R. Rolt