Author: Townsend, George
Biography:
TOWNSEND, George (1788-1857: ODNB)
He was born at Ramsgate, Kent, on 12 Sept. 1788, one of at least twelve children of Rev. George Townsend (1756-1837), dissenting minister at the Ebenezer Independent chapel, and Susannah Morris (1764-1846) who had married at St. Botolph, City of London in 1784. He was educated at Ramsgate and came to the attention of Richard Cumberland (q.v.), who assisted him to proceed to Trinity College Cambridge (BA 1812, MA 1816). He was ordained deacon (1813) and priest (1814). He was curate of Littleport, Cambridgeshire (1813-14) and of Hackney, London (1814-15), and professor at the Military College, Sandhurst (1816-22). He was made a prebendary of Durham Cathedral in 1825 and held the post until his death. He also held a church living as vicar of Northallerton (1826-39) which he exchanged for the perpetual curacy of St. Margaret’s, Durham (1839-42). In his lifetime he was highly regarded for his historical and chronological arrangements of the Old Testament (1821) and New Testament (1826). His anti-Catholic stance in his Accusations of History against the Church of Rome (1825) is thought to have advanced him in the church but his later trip to Italy to attempt to convert Pope Pius IX in 1850, recounted in Journal of a Tour in Italy in 1850 (1850), must be regarded as earnest but eccentric. His Thirty Sermons (1830) and Twenty-Seven Sermons(1849) are no longer read. In addition to the works listed here, he later contributed seventeen descriptive sonnets to accompany the engravings of Thomas Stothard in Illustrations of the Pilgrim’s Progress (1840). He married first, Elizabeth Fyler on 8 July 1813 at St. Nicholas, Brighton, with whom he had two sons (who both entered the church) and a daughter. After her death in 1835 he married Charlotte Charlton Hollingbery on 19 Dec. 1838, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, London. There was no further issue. He died at the College, Durham, on 23 Nov. 1857. His widow, Charlotte, died at the Otto House Asylum, Hammersmith, London, in 1887. (ODNB 10 July 2023; DNB; ancestry.co.uk 10 July 2023; findmypast.co.uk 10 July 2023; CCEd 10 July 2023; OUCH 17 July 1813; Sun [London] 11 Dec. 1835; MH 19 Dec. 1838; Newcastle Journal 5 Dec. 1857; Church Magazine May 1839, 129-31; GM Feb. 1839, 204, and Jan. 1858, 101) AA