Author: Walker, John
Biography:
WALKER, John (1754-1807: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 22 Feb. 1754, at St. Ebbe, Oxford, the son of William Walker (1705-1775), Fellow of Magdalen College (1729-47) and his wife Mary Cartwight, who had married at Wytham, Oxfordshire, on 2 April 1747. John Walker was first a chorister and then student at Magdalen College Oxford (Matric. 1771, BA 1775) and entered the church in 1772. Thereafter he held a number of livings in Norfolk until his death. He married Hannah Fortye on 23 Sept. 1778, at St. Mary in the Marsh, Norfolk. They had one son, Peter Fortye Walker (1780-1847), who went to Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and also entered the church. It is not known where and when Hannah Walker died but the Rev. John Walker, widower, of St. Mary in the Marsh, Norwich, married Lorina Scott, the daughter of the Rev. Nathaniel Scott, at Diss, Norfolk, on 26 Feb. 1785. They had six children. A son, Richard Walker (1791-1870), also went to Magdalen College, entered the church, and was Master of Magdalen College school 1828-44. John Walker died at his house in Lower-Close, Norwich, on 12 Nov. 1807, aged 52. His Poems (1809) were edited by his son Peter Fortye Walker, who had access to his father’s papers; he reprinted and first assigned Academic Trifles (Oxford 1778) and Mirth (Cambridge 1774) to his father. Mirth has been traditionally attributed to William Mason (following Halkett and Laing) on the basis of the initials W. M. However, J. W. Draper, William Mason (1924), 345, doubted the attribution and ESTC restates the query. Mason was always a doubtful candidate as a “juvenile Muse” in 1774 since he was almost fifty. As a young man in Oxford Walker may not have wanted to acknowledge a critical response to Thomas Warton’s The Pleasures of Melancholy (1747) and provoke the coterie of young poets surrounding Warton at Trinity College. (ancestry.co.uk 24 Jan. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 24 Jan. 2022; Copsey 1: 506; John Rouse Bloxam, A Register of… Saint Mary Magdalen College 1: 170-1 [1853], 3: 268-270 [1863], 6: 201 [1879]; OJ 23 Dec. 1775; OUCH 21 Nov. 1807, Monthly Magazine Nov. 1807, 1085; family tree in Richard Walker (ed.), The Dove [1839], 54) AA