Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/92

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. v. JAN. 27, 1012.

Lipscomb, ' Buckinghamshire,' iv. 288, 290). Through the death on 7 July, 1788, of her only brother, Thomas Abbott Hamilton, in the 32nd year of his age, she came into a handsome fortune. A poetic epitaph of ten lines by Cowper to his memory was placed on a tombstone on the south side of the churchyard of the parish.

Soon after the death of this wife Great- heed resigned his charge of the congregation at Newport Pagnell, withdrew to Bishop's Hull, near Taunton, and married Jane Dorothea Stephenson. He had been elected F.S.A. on 26 June, 1806, and admitted on the following 13 November. Archaeological pursuits soon engrossed his energies. For the rest of his days he lived at Bishop's Hull, and there he died, it is believed in the Manor House, "after a few days of increased de- bility," on 15 Feb., 1823. ' A tablet behind the pulpit of the Independent chapel is inscribed " to the ever blessed memory of Samuel Greatheed, F.A.S., and of Jane Dorothea, his beloved wife. In acquirements dis- tinguished, in labours unwearied, in bene- factions abundant." His portrait was the frontispiece to the number of The Evangelical Magazine for April, 1794.

The will of Greatheed was dated 22 Nov., 1822, but was not witnessed. Charles Poulett Harris, gent., and Elizabeth Stephenson, spinster, both of Bishop's Hull, swore to his handwriting, and it was proved by the executors on 2 June, 1823. He directed that his body should be laid in the burial-ground of the Independent meeting- house at Bishop's Hull, and that all his pro- perty, when his eldest son became 21, should be shared between his two sons Samuel Stephenson Greatheed and Abbott Hamilton Greatheed. Should they both die before that age, the property was to be divided between four specified societies of the Evan- gelical party. The executors were his wife Jane Dorothea, her brother the Rev. Joseph Adam Stephenson, and the Rev. Thomas Palmer Bull. If one of them died, the remain- ing two were to elect another from among his two brothers-in-law, the Rev. William Rose Stephenson and the Rev. Samuel Rothey Straitland, and his wife's nephew the Rev. John Hollier Stephenson. The will was re-proved on 28 Nov., 1833, the Rev. William Rose Stephenson having been chosen as executor by the surviving two executors, the Rev. J. A. Stephenson and the Rev. T. P. Bull. The widow died on 31 Jan., 1824. She was born, at Rowley Regis, Staffordshire, 7 May, 1781, and was ^ the second daughter of the Rev. Christopher

Stephenson, Vicar of Olney (Evangelical Mag., April, 1824, p. 144).

Greatheed' s chief interest to us lies in his friendship with Cowper. The poet de- scribed him in 1785 as " a well-bred, agree- able young man," and having read to him, and heard his approval of, the translation of the first book of the ' Iliad,' pronounced him " a man of letters and of taste." Cowper described to him on 6 Aug., 1792, his journey to Hayley at Eartham in Sussex, but in the following year he put on one side an invitation to stay with him. Greatheed' s ' Practical Improvement of the Divine Counsel and Conduct, a sermon on William Cowper preached at Olney, 18 'May, 1800,' was printed in that year with a dedication to Lady Hesketh. It passed through two later editions in 1801.

Greatheed inserted in The Evangelical Mag., April, 1803, pp. 129-37, andMay, 1803, pp. 177-86, a memoir of Cowper. On it and his sermon in 1800, and on Hayley's life of the poet, were based the " Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Cowper, new ed., revised, corrected, and recommended by the Rev. S. Greatheed," which came out in 1814. He only took charge of the com- pilation when two-thirds of it had passed through the press, but it had been revised and corrected by him, and he knew the facts to be true. The meagre life, purporting to be "by the Rev. T. Greatheed," which was prefixed to the 1821 edition of Cowper's poems, was no doubt by him. For some years after 1792 he was intimate with Hay- ley. A letter to him (dated Newport Pagnel, 8 April, 1794) on Cowper's illness is printed in Southey's ' Works of Cowper ' (1854 ed.), ii. 108-9. "A brief sketch of the character of the late William Hayley, Esq.," was found among Greatheed' s papers by his widow, and some extracts from it are included in the ' Memoirs of Hayley,' by John Johnson, LL.D., 1823, ii. p. 200, et seq.

Greatheed contributed to the Archceologia, xvi. pp. 95-122, an elaborate dissertation " respecting the origin of the inhabitants of the British Islands," in three letters to John Wilkinson, M.D. In 1812 he made an examination of the relics of Stonehenge. His letter to John Britton on them is printed in the ' Beauties of England and Wales,' xv. pt. i. pp. 707-14. Some criticisms on his observations are in The Gent. Mag., 1823, pt, i. pp. 317-19, 509-11.

When the first number of The Evangelical Magazine appeared in 1793, the name of Samuel Greatheed was given among its contributors and among the trustees for