Author: Stevens, John
Biography:
STEVENS, John (1768-1837: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 27 Aug. 1768 at St. Edburg’s, Bicester, Oxfordshire, the only son of John Stevens and his wife Ann Brooks, who had married the previous year. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford (matric. 1787, Fellow 1789, BA 1794, MA 1795). In 1797 he was appointed a canon of Chichester cathedral and head of thee prebendal school. He relinquished his fellowship on his marriage to Augusta Mary Norton (1788-1874) on 4 May 1809 at St. Mary’s, Lewisham, south London. They went on to have ten children. He was presented with a series of college livings as rector of Birchanger, Essex (1807), Swalcliffe with Epwell, Oxfordshire (1808), East Wiltering, Sussex (1809), before the Duke of Norfolk gave him the living of Great Poringland, Norfolk (1813-37). In 1821 and 1822 church authorities investigated whether he was capable of performing his duties but allowed him to continue. In 1833 and 1835 he was criticised for not finding a curate to perform his duties. Towards the end of his life he was blind and senile. He died on 24 Jan. 1837 at Swalcliffe. His wife survived him and died in 1874 at Bromley College, Kent, an almshouse founded in 1666 by John Warner, Bishop of Rochester, for twenty poor widows. There is a memorial plaque to them at Swalcliffe church. His sole volume of verse, listed here, celebrating British victories in the Napoleonic Wars, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Liverpool, together with a hackneyed moral criticism of Byron, was long past its sell-by date in 1827 and attracted little attention. (ancestry.co.uk 12 Feb. 2023; CCEd 12 Feb. 2023; SJC 4 May 1809; London Courier 3 Feb. 1837; GM, April 1837, 440; LES 28 Apr. 1874) AA