Author: Warren, Thomas Alston
Biography:
WARREN, Thomas Alston (1768-1853: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 18 Dec. 1768 and baptised on 31 Jan. 1769 at Dunstable, Bedfordshire, the son of Thomas Warren, surgeon, and his wife Mary Taylor, who had married at Dunstable on 31 Jan. 1764. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and St. John’s College, Oxford (matric. 1787, BA 1791, MA 1795, BD 1800, Fellow until 1814 and Chaplain from 1834 until his death). At Oxford he contributed to The Loiterer, a periodical produced by James and Henry Austen (Jane Austen’s brothers). He was Perpetual Curate at Randwick, Gloucestershire, 1800-14 and also held the living of Flamstead and Kensworth, Hertfordshire, where he mostly lived. He was Rector of South Warnborough, Hampshire,1814-53 but also lived in Oxford for extended periods in connection with his duties as Chaplain of St. John’s. He married Catherine Manley, the eldest daughter of Sergeant Manley, a Commissioner of Excise, on 27 Sept. 1825 at Bampton, Oxford. There was no issue. He died at the Rectory in South Warnborough on 26 Dec. 1853, leaving over £1500 to his wife, family, his college, and other charities. Catherine Warren died just over a week later, on 8 Jan. 1854. In addition to the poem listed here, he published A poem on the New Church at Gally Hill (1841); An Address. . . on the . . . Cow-Pox, or Vaccine Inoculation (1804) which raised some objections to vaccination; and A Sermon (1805) celebrating Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar. An 1831 sermon highlighting the plight of the distressed Irish was admired but never published. (ancestry.co.uk 14 Feb. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 14 Feb. 2022; CCEd 14 Feb. 2022; GM Apr. 1808, 373, Mar. 1814, 306, Mar. 1854, 330, Apr. 1854, 437; Morning Post 29 Sept. 1825; LES 6 Jan. 1854; Lloyd’s Weekly 15 Jan. 1854; Reading Mercury 11 July 1831; H. B. Wilson, The History of Merchant-Taylors’ School [1812], 1215; information from Mark Jenkin) AA