Author: Stokes, Henry Sewell
Biography:
STOKES, Henry Sewell (1808-95: ODNB)
He was born on 16 June 1808 at Gibraltar, the eldest child of Henry Stokes, a proctor and notary, and Anne Sewell, who had married the previous year. Around 1815 he was sent to England and attended St. Saviour’s Grammar School in Southwark, South London, before moving to Dr. William Giles’s school at Chatham, where Charles Dickens was a contemporary. He returned to Gibraltar in 1823, studied law for three years, and acquired a knowledge of French, Spanish and Italian. He was then articled to a solicitor in Tavistock, Devon, to complete his legal training. In 1834 he established his own legal practise in Truro, Cornwall, where he also became Mayor (1856), Town Clerk (1859), and Clerk of the Peace for the County (1865-95). He married Louisa Rachel Evans (“Lucy”) on 9 Aug. 1834 at Tavistock. They had three daughters and a son. His wife predeceased him in 1890. He died on 7 Apr. 1895, aged 87, and was buried in Bodmin Old Cemetery, leaving an estate of just under £7000 to his children. Several lengthy obituaries appeared in the local press. Besides the works listed here, he wrote The Vale of Lanherne and Other Poems (1836) (with additions 1853), Echoes of the War and Other Poems (1855), Scattered Leaves (1862), Rhymes from Cornwall (1871), Poems of Later Years (1873), Restormel: A Legend (1875), The Plaint of Morwenstowe (1876), The Gate of Heaven, and The Plaint of Morwenstowe (1876), The Chantry Owl and Other Verses (1881), and The Voyage of Arundel (1884). He recorded his life in a long poem, Memories: A Life’s Epilogue (1872, revised 1879). As a journalist he edited the Cornish Guardian 1833-7 and contributed to other papers. His Three Discourses: On Opinion, the Connection between Knowledge and Virtue and the Press as an Engine for the Diffusion of Knowledge (1833) codified well-worn themes. (ODNB 4 June 2022; West Country Poets, 427-30; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis [1878] 2: 691-2; N&Q 3 Feb. 1883, 93-4; Royal Cornwall Gazette 21 Aug. 1834, 11 Apr. 1895; Cornish and Devon Post 22 Feb. 1890) AA