Skip to main content

Author: Walpole, Robert

Biography:

WALPOLE, Robert (1781-1856: ODNB)

He was born in Lisbon, Portugal, on 8 Aug. 1781 and baptised on 26 Sept., the son of the British Envoy Robert Walpole and his first wife Diana Grossett, who had married in Portugal in 1780. His grandfather Horatio was the first Baron Walpole of Wolterton and his great-uncle Robert the first British prime minister. He was educated at Charterhouse and went first to Oxford (matric. Merton College 1797) and then to Trinity College, Cambridge (admitted 1799, BA 1803, MA 1809, BD 1828), and also to Lincoln’s Inn, where he was admitted 1803 but was not called to the bar. He was ordained deacon in 1808 and priest in 1809, and served as rector of Itteringham, Norfolk (1809-56), Tivetshall, Norfolk (1815-28), and Christ Church, Marylebone, Middlesex (1828-56). On 6 Feb. 1811 he married Caroline Frances Hyde at St. George’s, Hanover Square, London; they had four children. Besides the verse translations listed here, he published scholarly and archaeological works (on fragments of Greek comedy, 1805; on a papyrus found at Herculaneum [with other authors], 1810), and three volumes of travels founded on journeys he had made in the Middle East and elsewhere after leaving Trinity (1810, 1817, 1820). Walpole had estates in Norfolk but also a house in London. His wife Caroline died at Cheltenham on 19 Dec. 1840, and he at home on Harewood St., London, on 16 Apr. 1856. (ODNB 27 Mar. 2024; ancestry.com 27 Mar. 2024; findmypast.com 27 Mar. 2024; ACAD; CCEd 27 Mar. 2024) 

 

Books written (2):