Author: Whitehouse, John
Biography:
WHITEHOUSE, John (1757-1824: ancestry.co.uk)
He was possibly the son of Joseph Whitehouse and Martha Freeman who had married in 1756 and baptised a son, John Freeman Whitehouse, on 19 Mar. 1757 at St. Peter’s, Bedford, Bedfordshire, but there is nothing to corroborate this and the Cambridge registers do not give his father’s name. There are also other candidates. He may have been educated at Bedford school but was not the Master (in 1799-1809) and sometime independent Writing Master who was another John Whitehouse. He proceeded to St. John’s College, Cambridge (matric. 1785) but kept only four terms and does not seem to have taken a degree. He was ordained deacon (1787) and priest (1790). He was curate of Houghton Conquest, Bedford (1790-9), vicar of Sharnbrook (1799-1800); rector of Armethorpe, Yorkshire (1801-7); rector of St. Mary’s, Orlingbury, Northants (1807-24); and chaplain to the Duke of York. He learned to paint and copied an old-master version of Jacob’s Ladder on the altar at Sharnbrook. He also learned German and translated Stolberg’s Hymn to the Earth (1800). He married Elizabeth Susanna Frederica Ewart, Countess of Wartensleben (1764-1817), widow of Joseph Ewart (formerly British plenipotentiary in Berlin), on 30 May 1799 at Weybridge, Surrey. There was no issue. He died, aged 67, on 1 Oct. 1824 at Ramsgate, where he had gone for the benefit of his health. He was buried at St. Lawrence, Thanet. Poems (1787) contains the usual array of elegies, odes, sonnets, and inscriptions, together with a subscribers’ list with no obvious clues concerning his birth or family. Odes (1794) consists of ten accomplished odes on well-worn topics, including “To Poetical Enthusiasm,” “To War,” “To Horror,” and “To Beauty.” Mary Robinson, q.v., was presented with a copy and responded with a poem in her Poetical Works (1806), 1: 230-4. His patriotic war verse, Hymn of Thanksgiving (1814), critical of “Revolutionary Power,” was widely admired, as was his panegyric to his wife, Tribute of Affection (1819). He also published a sermon delivered at Orlingbury, The Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals (1810), and a longer theological work, The Kingdom of God on Earth (1821). (Spenserians; ACAD; ancestry.co.uk 7 Nov. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 7 Nov. 2024; Stamford Mercury 19 Sept. 1817; Northampton Mercury 9 Oct. 1824; CCEd 7 Nov. 2024; New Monthly Magazine 12 [Nov. 1824], 521; Rivers [1798] 2: 382) AA
Other Names:
- J. Whitehouse