Author: Selby, Charles Bridge
Biography:
SELBY, Charles Bridge (1779-1820: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born at the Mote, Ightham, Kent, and baptised on 26 Feb. 1779 at St. Nicholas, Castle Hedingham, Essex, the son of Thomas Browne and Elizabeth Walford, who had married in 1775. In 1783 his grandfather inherited the Mote (a Grade 1 medieval moated manor house) and changed the family name to Selby. Nothing is known of Charles Bridge Selby’s education. He may have served in the navy. In 1801 he was imprisoned in Newgate for debt. He married Ann Davies on 24 Sept. 1804 at St. Pancras Old Church, London. They had a son and a daughter. On the recommendation of the bishops of Exeter and Sarum, he became a schoolmaster around 1806 on St. Mary’s Island in the Scilly Isles. He was subsequently ordained deacon and priest (1808) and took up the post as missionary for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and vicar of St. Agnes, the most southerly of the Scilly Isles, at an initial salary of £80 per annum. He remained there at least until 1816 but later went to London where he lived in Lambeth and was again imprisoned for debt at the Fleet in Feb. 1819. He died in Lambeth, south London, and was buried at St. Peter’s, Ightham, Kent, on 4 Aug. 1820. His father and sister had died earlier the same year. For reasons unknown his father had disinherited him. This may have been to protect the estate from creditors. A Letter from an English Prisoner of War (1798) is signed and dated from HMS St. George but his status or role on the ship has not been established. Crim. Con. (1801), signed from the Mote, is an indiscreet but mildly amusing account of the liaison and criminal conversation (adultery) trial of George Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford (1766-1840) and Lady Mary Ann Sturt (1758-1854), ending “Hail MURDER! INCEST ! PERJURY! CRIM. CON!/Hail ev’ry SIN that e’er disgraced the EARTH !” (ancestry.co.uk 28 Oct. 2023; CCEd 28 Oct. 2023; Burke’s General Armory [1842]; Baptist Magazine Apr. 1809, 163; Christian Observer Feb. 1810, 127; A General Account of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge [1816], 295) AA