John Moultrie
Encyclopedia
Life
He was born in Great Portland StreetGreat Portland Street
Great Portland Street is a street in the West End of London. Linking Oxford Street with Albany Street and the busy A501 Marylebone Road and Euston Road, the road forms the boundary between Fitzrovia to the east and Marylebone to the west...
, London, on 31 December 1799, at the house of his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Fendall; he was the eldest son of George Moultrie, rector of Cleobury Mortimer
Cleobury Mortimer
Cleobury Mortimer is a small rural market town in Shropshire, England. The town's parish has a population of 1,962 according to the 2001 census. Although sometimes regarded as a village, it is in fact the second smallest town in Shropshire , having been granted a town charter in 1253.Several...
, Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
, by his wife Harriet (died 1867). His father was the son of John Moultrie
John Moultrie (politician)
John Moultrie was a deputy governor of East Florida in the years before the American Revolutionary War. He became acting governor when his predecessor, James Grant, was invalided home in 1771...
of South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
.
After preliminary education at Ramsbury
Ramsbury
Ramsbury is a village in Ramsbury and Axford civil parish in the English county of Wiltshire. The village is in the Kennet Valley near the Berkshire boundary. The nearest towns are Hungerford about east and Marlborough about west. The much larger town of Swindon is about to the north.The civil...
, Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
, Moultrie was in 1811 sent to Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
; John Keate
John Keate
John Keate was an English schoolmaster, and headmaster of Eton College.He was born at Wells, Somerset, the son of Prebendary William Keate, D.D., rector of Laverton, Somerset, and brother of Robert Keate FRCS , Serjeant-Surgeon to King William IV and Queen Victoria.He was educated at Eton and...
, whom he annoyed by a visit to Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
's monument at Stoke Poges
Stoke Poges
Stoke Poges is a village and civil parish in the South Buckinghamshire district of Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the south of the county, about three miles north of Slough and a mile east of Farnham Common....
, was then headmaster. among his friends were William Sidney Walker
William Sidney Walker
-Life:Born at Pembroke in Wales, on 4 December 1795, he was the eldest child of John Walker, a naval officer, who died at Twickenham in 1811 from the effects of wounds received in action. The boy was named after his godfather, Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, under whom his father had served. His mother's...
, Lord Morpeth, Richard Okes, John Louis Petit
John Louis Petit
-Life:He was born at Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, the son of John Hayes Petit, by Harriet Astley of Dukinfield Lodge, Lancashire. He was educated at Eton College, and contributed to the Etonian. He was elected to a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1822, graduated B.A. in 1823 and...
, Henry Nelson Coleridge
Henry Nelson Coleridge
Henry Nelson Coleridge was an editor of the works of his uncle Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Henry's father was Captain James Coleridge, the poet's brother. While a chancery barrister, Henry married Samuel's daughter Sara in 1829. He was a great admirer of his uncle and father-in-law...
and Edward Coleridge, and Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Winthrop Mackworth Praed was an English politician and poet.-Early life:He was born in London. The family name of Praed was derived from the marriage of the poet's great-grandfather to a Cornish heiress. Winthrop's father, William Mackworth Praed, was a serjeant-at-law. His mother belonged to the...
. He composed with great facility in Latin, but was indifferent to school studies, distinguishing himself as a cricketer, an actor, and wit .
In October 1819 Moultrie entered as a commoner Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
, where he became intimate with Thomas Babington Macaulay, Charles Austin
Charles Austin (lawyer)
Charles Austin was an English lawyer, prominent in the Railway Mania of the later 1840s.-Early life:Austin was the second son of Jonathan Austin, of Creeting Mill, in the county of Suffolk; John Austin was his elder brother. He was educated at Bury St Edmunds Grammar School...
, and others of their set. Proceeding M.A. in 1822, he spent time at the Middle Temple
Middle Temple
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...
, but after acting for some time as tutor to the three sons of Lord Craven, he gave up the law and decided to take holy orders
Holy Orders
The term Holy Orders is used by many Christian churches to refer to ordination or to those individuals ordained for a special role or ministry....
; he had an offer of the living of Rugby, Warwickshire
Rugby, Warwickshire
Rugby is a market town in Warwickshire, England, located on the River Avon. The town has a population of 61,988 making it the second largest town in the county...
by Lord Craven in 1825. In 1825 he was also ordained, and on 28 July in that year he married Harriet Margaret Fergusson, sister of James Fergusson
James Fergusson (architect)
James Fergusson , was a Scottish writer on architecture.-Life:Fergusson was born at Ayr, the son of William Fergusson an army surgeon. After being educated first at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and then at a private school in Hounslow, he went to Calcutta as a partner in a mercantile house...
.
He had the parsonage at Rugby rebuilt, and went to reside there in 1828. Moultrie arrived in the parish almost simultaneously with Thomas Arnold
Thomas Arnold
Dr Thomas Arnold was a British educator and historian. Arnold was an early supporter of the Broad Church Anglican movement...
's acceptance of the headmastership of Rugby School
Rugby School
Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...
, and they became firm friends. Writing to Derwent Coleridge
Derwent Coleridge
Derwent Coleridge , third child of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was a distinguished English scholar and author.-Early life:Derwent Coleridge was born at Keswick, Cumberland, 14 Sept. 1800 . He was sent with his brother Hartley to be educated at a small school near Ambleside...
, Moultrie's close friend Bonamy Price
Bonamy Price
Bonamy Price was an English political economist.He was born at St Peter Port, Guernsey, and entered at Worcester College, Oxford, in 1825, where he took a double first in 1829. From 1830 to 1850 he was an assistant master at Rugby school...
described the reciprocal influence of these two men.
He died on 26 December 1874 at Rugby of smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
which he had caught from a parishioner whom he was visiting. He was buried in the parish church, to which an aisle was added in his memory. His gravestone says "The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep".
Works
At school he wrote for the College Magazine, edited the subsequent Horæ Otiosæ, and after leaving Eton contributed verses to the Etonian during 1820–1. His treatment of the subject of Lady GodivaLady Godiva
Godiva , often referred to as Lady Godiva , was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants...
was praised by William Gifford
William Gifford
William Gifford was an English critic, editor and poet, famous as a satirist and controversialist.-Life:Gifford was born in Ashburton, Devonshire to Edward Gifford and Elizabeth Cain. His father, a glazier and house painter, had run away as a youth with vagabond Bampfylde Moore Carew, and he...
and William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
. Both in the Etonian and in Charles Knight
Charles Knight (publisher)
Charles Knight was an English publisher and author.-Early life:The son of a bookseller and printer at Windsor, he was apprenticed to his father...
's Quarterly Magazine his verses appeared under the pseudonym ‘Gerard Montgomery.’
In 1837 Moultrie issued a collection of his poems, which were favourably reviewed both in the Quarterly Review
Quarterly Review
The Quarterly Review was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by the well known London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967.-Early years:...
and the Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
In 1843 he published ‘The Dream of Life; Lays of the English Church and other Poems.’ It is an autobiographical meditation in verse, which contains comments on contemporaries, including Thomas Babington Macaulay, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Charles Austin, Chauncey Hare Townshend, and Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor was the 22nd President of Liberia, serving from 2 August 1997 until his resignation on 11 August 2003....
. In 1850 appeared ‘The Black Fence, a Lay of Modern Rome,’ an anti-papal work, and ‘St. Mary, the Virgin and Wife,’ both of which had several editions. In 1852 he edited the Poetical Remains of William Sidney Walker.
In 1854 appeared his last volume of verse, ‘Altars, Hearths, and Graves.’ Among its contents is the ‘Three Minstrels,’ giving an account of Moultrie's meetings, on different occasions, with Wordsworth, Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
and Tennyson. In his later work Moultrie became the writer of much blank verse
Blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
of a conscientious and explanatory type. He also wrote a number of hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
s, on special subjects. Most of them are in Benjamin Hall Kennedy
Benjamin Hall Kennedy
Benjamin Hall Kennedy was an English scholar and schoolmaster, known for his work in the teaching of the Latin language.-Biography:...
's Hymnologia Christiana, 1863.
A complete edition of his poems was published in two volumes in 1876, with a memoir, by Derwent Coleridge.
Family
His wife Harriet died in 1864, leaving three sons—Gerard, George William, and John Fergusson—and four daughters. Of them Gerard MoultrieGerard Moultrie
Gerald Moultrie was a Victorian public schoolmaster and Anglican hymnographer born in England September 16, 1829, at Rugby Rectory, England. His father, John Moultrie was also a hymn writer. He was educated at Rugby and Exeter College...
and Mary Moultrie were also known as hymn writers.