Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/131

 :: Essay concerning Civil Government, considered as it stands related to Religion,’ London, 1724, 8vo; reprinted in ‘The Churchman armed against the Errors of the Times,’ vol. iii., London, 1814, 8vo. A collected edition of his earlier writings appeared in 1737, entitled ‘The Works of Henry Stebbing,’ London, fol. He has also been credited with an anonymous satire entitled ‘The Fragment,’ published at Cambridge in 1751, which assailed several leading statesmen and ecclesiastics of the time.
 * 1) ‘An Apology for the Clergy of the Church of England,’ London, 1734, 8vo.
 * 2) ‘A Brief Account of Prayer and the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and other religious duties appertaining to Christian Worship,’ London, 1739, 8vo; 4th edit. 1771, 12mo.
 * 3) ‘A Caution against Religious Delusion,’ London, 1739, 8vo; this work, directed against the methodists, ran through six editions within a year.
 * 4) ‘Christianity justified upon the Scripture Foundation,’ London, 1750, 8vo.
 * 5) ‘Sermons on Practical Christianity,’ London, 1759–60, 8vo.

By his wife, a daughter of Robert Camel of Eye, Suffolk, Stebbing had a son, (1716–1787), a fellow of St. Catharine Hall, who became in 1749 rector of Gimingham and Trunch in Norfolk, and, on the resignation of his father in 1750, was appointed preacher to the Society of Gray's Inn. He died at Gray's Inn on 13 Nov. 1787. He was the author of a collection of ‘Sermons on Practical Subjects,’ London, 1788–90, 8vo, published by his son, Henry Stebbing, a barrister, with a memoir (Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 19170, f. 196; Gent. Mag. 1787, ii. 1032).



STEBBING, HENRY (1799–1883), poet, preacher, and historian, born at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, on 26 Aug. 1799, was the son of John Stebbing (d. 11 Dec. 1826), who married Mary Rede (d. 24 May 1843) of the Suffolk family of that name, both of whom were buried in the cemetery of St. James, Piccadilly. He ‘penned a stanza’ when he was a schoolboy, and his first poem, ‘The Wanderers,’ was printed at the close of 1817 and circulated among his friends. In the following August he published ‘Minstrel of the Glen and other Poems,’ which included ‘The Wanderers,’ and in October 1818 he proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he had been admitted a sizar on 4 July 1818. He graduated B.A. 1823, M.A. 1827, and D.D. 1839, and on 3 July 1857 was admitted ad eundem at Oxford. On 3 April 1845 he was elected F.R.S.

Stebbing was ordained deacon by Bishop Bathurst of Norwich in 1822, and priest in 1823. Within a few months he was in charge of three parishes for absentee incumbents, and rode forty miles each Sunday to do the duty. In 1825 he was appointed evening lecturer at St. Mary's, Bungay, and about 1824 he became perpetual curate of Ilketshall St. Lawrence, Norfolk. He married, at Calton church, near Norwich, on 21 Dec. 1824, Mary, daughter of William Griffin of Norwich, and sister of Vice-admiral William Griffin, and in order to increase his income he became, in January 1826, second master, under Dr. Valpy, of Norwich grammar school. (1813–1895) [q. v.] was one of his pupils there.

In 1827 Stebbing moved to London, and was soon ‘working for the booksellers from morning to night and sometimes from night to morning.’ His connection with the ‘Athenæum’ from its foundation was what he most valued. He was engaged by Silk Buckingham ‘in the very first planning of the new journal, and in shaping the mode of its publication.’ A notice by him of Dr. Hampden's work on ‘Butler's Analogy, or Philosophical Evidences of Christianity,’ was the opening review in the first number of 2 Jan. 1828, and his article on Whately's ‘Rhetoric’ led the second number. After three or four issues he became the working editor (cf. his letter on The Athenæum in 1828–30, which appeared in that paper on 19 Jan. 1878).

From 1834 to 1836 he edited, with the Rev. R. Cattermole, thirty volumes of the ‘Sacred Classics’ of England. He was editor of the ‘Diamond Bible’ (1834, 1840, and 1857), ‘Diamond New Testament’ (1835), ‘Charles Knight's Pictorial Edition of the Book of Common Prayer’ (1838–1840), Tate and Brady's ‘Psalms’ (1840), ‘Psalms and Hymns, with some original Hymns’ (1841), and many modern theological works. He also edited the works of Josephus (1842) and of Bunyan, Milton's ‘Poems’ (1839 and 1851), Defoe's ‘Plague’ (1830), and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ (1859).

Stebbing wrote a continuation to the ‘Death of William IV,’ of Hume and Smollett's ‘History of England.’ His ‘Essay on the Study of History,’ which appeared as