Author: Smith, John
Biography:
SMITH, John (1767-1827: ancestry.co.uk)
Pseudonym Aedituus
He was baptised on 24 Nov. 1767 at St. Andrew Undershaft, City of London, the eldest of three sons of Samuel Smith, attorney, and Mary Elizabeth Grose, who had married at St. Martin in the Fields in 1765. He was educated at Eton and King’s College Cambridge (matric 1787, BA 1791, MA 1802, Fellow 1790-9). At Eton he co-authored with George Canning, John Hookham Frere (qq.v.) and others The Microcosm (1786), a periodical-essay collection which gained some celebrity at the time. He was admitted to the Middle Temple on 17 January 1787 but disliked law and joined the army in 1793. As a captain in the 14th Regiment of Foot, he was present at the Battle of the Glorious First of June 1794 when Lord Howe defeated the French fleet off Ushant, Brittany; he also served in the West Indies. He left the army in 1797. Back in England he served briefly as MP for East Looe (May-July 1799) and married Mary Palmer on 20 July 1799 at St. Mary, Alverstoke, Hampshire. He was appointed Postmaster General of Jamaica later that year and served until 1802 or 1803 but returned to England due to ill-health. Thereafter he was appointed Postmaster to the Navy by George Canning, in which post he served until his death. He was also sometime a Commissioner in the Alienation Office. In later life he lived at Seagrove, Isle of Wight, but at the time of making his will in 1826 he was resident in St. Luke’s, Chelsea. He died of a heart attack on 10 Mar. 1827, at his brother’s house at Kelsey Park, Beckenham, Kent. His wife Mary had predeceased him and his will left most of his estate to nephews and nieces, but he also made some provision for John Smith, the natural son he had had with Elizabeth Young of Pimlico. No other children are mentioned in the will and there may not have been issue from the marriage to Mary Palmer. In addition to the works listed here, he left unpublished at his death a quantity of miscellaneous poetry and a work on the Odyssey and the age of Homer. (ancestry.co.uk 18 Jan. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 18 Jan. 2024; Morning Post 30 Mar. 1827; English Chronicle 15 Mar. 1827; GM Apr. 1827, 366-7; R. A. Austen-Leigh, The Eton College Register 1753-1790 [1921], 481) AA