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Author: Woodley, George

Biography:

WOODLEY, George (1786-1846: ODNB)

He was baptised on 3 Apr. 1786 at Townstal church, Dartmouth, Devon, the son of Richard Woodley. The name of his mother is unknown.  He began writing poetry at the age of eleven while serving on a British man-of-war. After several years at sea, he published anonymously his first collection, Mount-Edgcumbe (1804). He married Mary Fabian at St. Andrew, Plymouth, on 6 Jul. 1807, and they went on to have at least eleven children. Later that year they moved to London where he was unsuccessful in publishing by subscription Poems on Various Subjects. It may have been revised or simply retitled as The Churchyard and Other Poems (1808), published on his return to Portsmouth. By May 1809 he was back in London at Furnival’s Inn Court, Holborn, He published a further five volumes, listed below. A seventh volume, Devonia, a Poem in Five Cantos, Descriptive of the Scenery of Devon, was advertised as in preparation in Aug. and Oct. 1820 but does not seem to have been published. In 1813 he was Acting Master at a school in Hackney but by June 1814 he had moved to Truro, Cornwall, to edit the Royal Cornwall Gazette. Eventually he entered the Church, being ordained deacon in 1819 and priest in 1820. He was awarded £50 for a prize-winning essay, The Divinity of Christ Proved (1819), which led to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) appointing him as Missionary in the Isles of Scilly 1822-42 at an annual salary of £150. HisView of the Present State of the Scilly Islands (1822) was revised and expanded in 1833.  On retirement, he received a gratuity of £100 and a £75 p.a. pension from them. In financial difficulty for most of his life, he made the first of many applications to the RLF in 1809. Between 1812 and 1835 he was awarded a total of £95 made up of 10 separate awards mostly of £10. In June 1840, an RLF report pointed out that he had lived rent-free on the Isles of Scilly with an adequate salary (with a pension), and assistance stopped. He moved to Martindale, Westmoreland, where he became perpetual curate. He died there on 24 Dec. 1846. His wife survived him and died in Taunton in 1856. (ODNB 16 Jun. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 16 Jun. 2021; CCEd 16 Jun. 2021; RLF 1/232; Spenserians; Star [London] 1 Oct. 1807; Scots Magazine Aug. 1820, 164 and Oct. 1824, 356; Cumberland Pacquet 5 Jan. 1847; GM Apr. 1847, 444) AA

 

Other Names:

  • G. W.
  • G. Woodley
 

Books written (6):

London/ Plymouth: A. K. Newman and Co./ printed by W. Southwood, 1812
Truro/ London: Michell and Co./ Law and Whittaker, and J. Hatchard, 1816