Skip to main content

Author: St. Aubyn, John Humphrey

Biography:

ST. AUBYN, John Humphrey (1790-1857: ancestry.co.uk)

He was born on 22 Jan. 1790 and baptised 13 June at Crowan, Cornwall, the third natural son of Sir John St. Aubyn (1758-1839), landowner, politician, and father of fifteen illegitimate children. His mother was Martha Nicholls (1764-1829), the daughter of a landscape gardener. He was educated at Westminster and Jesus College Cambridge (BA and ordination 1814). He was Vicar of St. Crowan, Cornwall from 1818 to 1828 but his career came to an abrupt end when he met Lady Elizabeth Anne Tyrell (1798-1878), daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Pilkington and wife of Sir John Tyssen Tyrrell, at the Essex Race ball in 1827. In November they eloped to London and were living as Mr. and Mrs. Johnson at a hotel in Leicester Square. On discovery, St. Aubyn fled to Boulogne and was sued by her husband for criminal conversation. Tyrrell was awarded £1500. The Tyrrells were subsequently divorced and she married St. Aubyn (under her reverted maiden name, Elizabeth Anne Pilkington) on 6 Aug. 1829 at the British Embassy Chapel in Paris. They had one son, Lionel, born in France in 1832. They remained in France for the rest of their lives. He died at Fontainebleau on 17 July 1857. She died on 18 Aug. 1878 at Bordeaux, leaving an estate of under £600. (On her marriage in 1819 to Tyrrell, her father had made a marriage settlement of £30,000.) In addition to the poems listed, he wrote two novels, Robert d’Artois (1835, anon.) and The Elopement (1838, pseud. Lionel Bouverie), a thinly-disguised version of events. (ancestry.co.uk 25 Aug. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 25 Aug. 2021; "St. Aubyn, John," ODNB 25 Aug. 2021; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis 2: 616; Morning Post 23 Feb. 1828; Essex Herald 31 Mar. 1829 [inter alia]; GM Oct. 1857, 464; Sherborne Mercury 4 May 1829; D. Hartley, The St. Aubyns of Cornwall [1977]) AA

 

Other Names:

  • J. H. St. Aubyn
 

Books written (2):