Author: York, Thomas
Biography:
YORK, Thomas (1801-1871: ancestry.com)
The youngest of the three sons of a nonconformist, William York, and his wife, Eleanor Commins (or Comins) of Helmsley, Yorkshire, the poet was born in New Turn Stile alley, London, on 24 July 1801. Two years later, on 19 June, he was baptized in the established church in St Giles in the Fields. His early situation was difficult: he stated in his 1829 volume, Midnight, and Other Miscellaneous Poems, that he had suffered “frauds, treachery, and calumny.” At age 25, he was admitted pensioner to St John’s College, Cambridge (not Queens’ as in CCEd; BA 1834). By letters dimissory, in 1834 he was ordained deacon at Buckden, Norfolk, under the surname Yorke that he went by for the rest of his life. He never was ordained priest. On 20 Jan. 1835, he was licensed stipendiary curate at Tittleshall St Mary. There, on 4 Aug. 1829, he married Harriet (b 1795), the daughter of Mitchell Forby of Godwick and his wife, Lydia Bullman. The three poems in Thomas’s book signed “H.F.” are reprinted in Harriet’s 1850 volume, The Self-Exiled, and Other Poems (in which she emphasizes her retirement and solitude). On 20 Jan. 1835, he was licensed stipendiary curate of Willingham St Mary, Suffolk, Norwich. From 1841 through 1853 he was curate of Weasenham St Peter, at Tittleshall. After incipient blindness brought an end to his ministerial career, the couple depended upon Harriet’s government annuity and Thomas’s £10 blindness annuity from Christ’s Hospital. In the 1861 census and 1871 census, he is listed as clergy “without cure of souls.” In 1861, the couple resided in Holt, where his uncle Henry lived, in Market Place in a dwelling with other impoverished tenants and a basket maker. On 28 Dec. 1863, despite his blindness, he delivered a lecture at Hackford Schoolroom on “Clefts of the Rocks, or Wonders beneath the Surface.” He died 24 July 1871 in Fish Hill, Holt, a commercial street where he and his wife had lived as early as 1864. Harriet died there on 3 Feb. 1877. Her effects at probate were estimated under £100. Death notices erroneously state that the poet had been curate of Gayton and Rougham. (ancestry.com 1 Oct. 2024; Norfolk electors 1841; West Norfolk election poll 1865; Post Office Directory of the Norfolk Counties [1853, 1854], 272; Norfolk Chronicle, 15 Aug. 1829, 2 Jan. 1864, 29 July 1871) JC