Author: Saul, Joseph
Biography:
SAUL, Joseph (1788-1845: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 28 Dec. 1788 at Giggleswick, Yorkshire, the son of Joseph Saul of Mowbray, Abbey Holme, Cumberland, writing master and mathematician, and his wife Mary Capstick, daughter of Rev. Richard Capstick of Bardsey. He was educated at Green Row, near Wigton, Holme Cultram, Cumberland, where his father taught, and he probably stayed on as a tutor. He appears not to have gone to university. He then went to Thorpe Arch Grammar School, Tadcaster, near Leeds, where he taught classics. He was appointed curate at Newchurch, Winwick, near Warrington (1811-14) and curate of Holy Trinity Chapel, Warrington (1814-42). Throughout much of his ministry he remained a schoolmaster at Green Row Academy but seems to have been in or near Warrington 1811-21. One of his pupils was William Gaskell, future husband of the novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell. (He may have tutored him privately due to Gaskell’s dissenting background.) He married Eliza Sawrey (1790-1855) on 17 Aug. 1812 at Warton, Lancashire. The question of issue is unclear. A number of children of Joseph and Elisa Saul are recorded in Quaker records at Green Row during the period 1811-1822 but there were several Joseph Sauls at Green Row who came from Quaker stock and it is unlikely that our poet would have registered his children as Quakers. There are other mysteries in his life. A later historian of Warrington, William Beamont, recorded that “He was betrayed by intemperance into grave irregularities, which were aggravated still further by an act of extreme indiscretion on his wife’s part, brought scandal on the church . . . and . . . led to his being suspended” (Beamont, 163). At this point he returned to Green Row permanently, although he was reinstated with a curate acting as his locum. He died on 28 Dec. 1845, aged 73, at Green Row and was buried in the churchyard at Abbey Town, Holme Cultram. His early volume, Edric and Helen: A Tale. Together with The Enthusiast of Nature (1814) is rare, with the only UK copy held at Warrington Museum. Apart from poetry, he published a sermon given at Newchurch Chapel in 1813. (ancestry.co.uk 24 Dec. 2022; William Beamont, Warrington Church Notes [1878], 159-68; Carlisle Journal 27 Dec. 1845; GRO death cert.) AA
Other Names:
- J. Saul