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Published on Monday, 15 September 2008 01:50

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Published on Saturday, 16 August 2008 00:59

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This is a reprint of an article from the printed edition of The FIG Tree Newsletter printed in May & August 1995

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Published on Wednesday, 10 September 2008 02:52

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This is a reprint of an article from the printed edition of The FIG Tree News, August & November 1998 and February, May & August 1999 Information

Provided By Leslie Fenton

In the first issue of this newsletter (printed in February of 1994), I discussed an English poet by the name of Elijah Fenton. In that article I agreed to provide more information about Elijah Fenton if there was interest. I had forgotten about the Fenton that help me get my research where it is today. So now I will begin a series of articles on this English poet. This first book, I believe was just titled Elijah Fenton. Unfortunately I did not keep a copy of the title page, so I am not certain who wrote the book or when it was published. Antecedents The early biographical accounts of Elijah Fenton invariably mention his ancient lineage and the relative opulence of his family. This tradition, which begins in the few pages devoted to Fenton by Theophilus Cibber in his Lives of the Poets, which is repeated in Johnson, and which find inevitable reiteration in the biographical dictionaries, has certain humorous potentialities when considered in the light of its subject's career. Elijah Fenton was obscure. He had to earn his livelihood. He seems to have owed nothing to the successful intervention of family, and little to the potency of the family name. When favor propitiated fortune in his behalf, that favor was itself the product of his own efforts. Yet the tradition is not merely idle words. The scribbler, tutor, and schoolmaster was born well and opulently. The name that he bore is a part of the geography and the history of his native Staffordshire. As a place designation, it finds entry in the Domesday Book, in which a Fenton is recorded as the holding of one Alward.1 The hamlet of Fenton appears in a list of communities compiled for Henry V.2 Naturally the place name early became a part of numerous personal cognomens. Several of these were borne by men who acquired minor distinction in the county. A William de Fenton was constable of Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1255.3 Another William was rector of St. James at Newcastle in 1258 and 1262, and possibly still another the first rector of St. Peter.s at Caverswall in 1284.4 Other early Fentons who found their way into the county records were Richard, 1381, Richard, 1416, Stephen, 1451, and Thomas, 1467.5 Among these persons, all those non-ecclesiastical were subsequently claimed as ancestors by the particular branch of the Fenton race from which Elijah sprang. The claim comes late, in the one chapter biography of the poet which, "revised by a representative of the family," has place in John Ward's Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent, published in 1844. It reflects, however, a family pride existent during the poet's own lifetime. The epitaph of Elijah's father in the parish churchyard at Stoke describes him as "antiqua stirpe generosus". This epitaph was first published in a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 61, p 703, dated from Newcastle-under-Lyme, and signed "T.F.". The family tree in Ward6 indicates that "T.F." was Thomas Fenton, grandson of Elijah's brother of the same name, and father of the "representative of the family" who revised Ward's biography. T.F. makes the poet himself the author of the epitaph. The correctness of this attribution is borne out not only by the general accuracy of T.F.'s statements, but also by certain auxiliary facts. In 1894, Robert Fenton, contributing prefactory comment and notes to W.W. Lloyd's essay about the poet, published a receipt which establishes the date of John Fenton's tombstone as 1726 and the person paying for its erection as Thomas Fenton. Elijah7 was the scholar of the family and so the natural person to write the inscription. In 1726 he was at the height of what distinction came to him. During this year, he demonstrably made a journey to Staffordshire. His affiliations with his brother Thomas were closer than with any other member of the family. Accordingly, I think it is a safe conclusion that the epitaph is of his authorship, and reflects his views, a circumstance which may throw some light upon the source of Cibber's comment twenty-seven years later upon the ancientness of the Fenton line. Only the identity of name connects the early Fentons with Elijah's specific family. But the latter, as resident near Stoke, dates back as far as the relatively complete parish records, which begin early in the sixteenth century. John Ward's family tree,8 formulated from these, makes the line's definite founder John Bageshall of Newcastle. Two make children are recorded, John and Richard. John mentioned in 1571, married a certain Katherine. Four of their children are listed: another John and three daughters, Ellen, Eliza, and Agnes. John, referred to in 1584, married an Elizabeth Hollins. Their daughter Agnes was married to an Edward Fenton, descendant of the Richard previously mentioned. Edward appears in the records in 1592. Edward and Agnes had six sons, the eldest of whom was named John. This John, mentioned in 1638 and in 1672, married Ellen Lovett. His eldest son was the father of the poet. Thus the "antiqua" of the epitaph seems justifiable enough. For pride of race other reasons existed. The first of these, it is true, may be illusory. The great Irish family of Boyle sprang from the union of Catherine Fenton, daughter of Sir Geoffrey, Irish secretary of state under Elizabeth and James, and Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork.9 Sir Geoffrey was of Nottingham. Robert Fenton cites a minute in the Herald's College for 1726 suggesting a common ancestry for the Fentons of Nottingham and of Staffordshire.10 The point is interesting in connection with the later patronage of Elijah by Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery, though one cannot be certain that the relationship was recognized by either party to the association. At any rate, if existent, the tie of blood was probably slight. The second reason is somewhat more definite. The afore mentioned epitaph pays tribute to Elijah's mother as well as to the father. This mother likewise finds mention in Cibber, 11 where, as the descendant of "one Mare, a captain in the army of William the Conqueror," she is made the justification of attributing to Elijah ancientness of lineage. The reference has the virtue of fitting Catherine Meare's12 maiden name, which had not previously appeared in print in connection with the poet. The suggestion is that Cibber's information must have come either from the Fenton family or indirectly from Fenton himself. Robert Fenton13 mentions an "ancient manuscript" giving Catherine the same pedigree. He does not, however, define that manuscript's precise degree of "ancientness"; and Catherine's name therein is Mare, as in Cibber, rather than Meare, and in the parish records. Furthermore, Cibber's brief and general account reveals no evidence of other contributions from the family. I am inclined, therefore, to believe that he had come by a memory of some statement of the poet's own. In either event, Catherine Meare was believed by her immediate descendants to have been the scion of a race even more ancient than the Fenton stock itself. Her Norman ancestor cannot now be authenticated. She did, however, come of a substantial family of Atherstone in Warwickshire.14 The other reasons for family pride have to do with the apparent position of the poet's father. As already indicated, John Fenton, born in 1638,15 was the eldest son of an eldest son. According to Ward,16 he had "inherited a considerable estate," described as consisting of Shelton Old Hall and a "good deal of land in that and the adjoining township". A certain distinction was doubtless attached to the possession of Shelton, which had been a manor as early as the twenty-fifth year of Edward I,17 and later a property of John of Gaunt's.18 John Fenton was a barrister and one of the coroners of the county19. If one may judge from the pecuniary resources of his eldest son, he was a man of considerable wealth. According to Cibber,20 the son enjoyed an income of a thousand pounds a year. I take the statement as deriving indirectly from Elijah Fenton himself. However inaccurate it may have been, the son was at any rate a prosperous gentleman. He built himself in Newcastle-under-Lyme a house which in the nineteenth century was used as a bank, first by Thomas Kinnersly and later by a branch of the national Provincial Bank of England.21 While the son's holdings were doubtless greater than the father's, having been enhanced by a fortunate marriage with Elizabeth Bagnall,22 the latter.s must have been quite considerable. If the impression of substantiality needs further confirmation, that confirmation may be provided by the subsequent history of the family's major line. A representative of that line was knighted in 1823,23 and the family retained possession of Shelton Old Hall until its destruction by fire in 1853.24 Of Elijah Fenton's parents, and particularly of his father, one would like to know more than their ancestry and social prestige. Their son was a poet; one would like to know their cultural affiliations. He was also a non-juror; one would like to know the opinions of John Fenton, barrister, regarding the Revolution of 1688. About the first, one bit of data may exist. Robert Fenton records25 the family's possession of a 1678 edition of Paradise Lost. Upon the back of an engraved portaiture of Milton their in, are inscribed Latin verses expressing conventional views of the lack of appreciation accorded the pot during his own age. To these verses is affixed the signature "John Fenton". Robert Fenton believes, from the character of certain notations in the volume, that Elijah later used this identical copy in his revision of Milton's punctuation. The fact may be so. The poet did mention it in his letters to Broome about the Milton edition, but he was a reticent person. There were many John Fentons, but Robert Fenton's notes seem chiefly to be based upon possessions of the branch of Thomas Fenton, in which the name John does not occur. The implication is that Elijah's forbears were quick to appreciate the greatness of Milton. About the second point, no information is available. What John Fenton thought of the stirring events that marked his later years gets into no record. His county was preponderantly out of accord with the drift of time. The Victoria history26 states that Staffordshire was Jacobite and even Romish, and that the local clergy fanned the flames of rebellion. Mass was said there openly immediately before the accession of James, and the Pretender's health openly drunk in 1714-15. In this county John Fenton was a man of some little prominence. But whether he shared the preponderant opinion must remain a matter of conjecture. II EDUCATION AND HETERODOXY (Brothers and sisters, Newcastle Grammar School, Cleopatra, Jesus College. John Fenton and Catherine Meare were married in 1657.27 They had a family of appropriately seventeenth-century proportions, all the members of which probably were born in the family residence of Shelton Old Hall, near Stoke-upon-Trent. The earliest biographies of Elijah, those of Cibber and Johnson, state the number of children as twelve. T. F.’s letter gave it as eleven, the number accepted in all subsequent accounts. The reason for the disagreement is, I think, ascertainable upon examination of the children’s names. Since the parish records are, in this respect, demonstrably not quite complete, these have to become by through a synthesis of sources. The names of two brothers, John and Thomas, with that of a sister Lydia, will appear in the history of Elijah Fenton’s career. The family tree in Ward gives the names of John and Thomas. Robert Fenton,28 apparently supplementing the parish records with those of the family, lists Elijah’s brothers and sisters as Hannah, John, Katherine, Deborah, Lydia, Thomas, Sarah, a second Katherine, Abigail, and a second Lydia. The existent parish records of Stoke afford the names and birth dates of John, January 6, 1658; Katherine, April 8, 1662; John, March 26, 1665; Thomas, August 8, 1666; Lydia, May 18, 1673; Lydia, April 25, 1675; and Sara, April 24, 1681. According to Robert Fenton, the duplication of names in the instances of Katherine and Lydia is due to the fact that the original bearers of these designations died in early infancy. A similar duplication exists in the cognomen John, given to two successive sons. John was the traditional designation of the eldest son in this branch of the Fenton line. Evidently the original John died in infancy. With him, there were twelve children born into the family. Besides the three early deaths mentioned, there was one other, Abigail also dying in infancy.29 The rest of Elijah’s brothers and sisters grew to maturity. Hannah married Thomas Bagnall of Newcastle. John married Elizabeth Bagnall (not of the same family), became a barrister, expanded the family fortunes, erected a mansion in Newcastle, and sired the line that eventually grew into a title. Katherine married Thomas Brooks of Chelford. Thomas married Sarah Bagnall of Newcastle, resided there, and founded the Fenton family that seems most to have treasured the tradition of Elijah. Deborah married first John Hill and later William Lester, both of Fenton-Vivian. Sarah married Thomas Baddeley and later William Stoddard. Lydia died unmarried.30 Elijah was the youngest child. T. F.’s letter established the date of his birth, which is not given in existent parish records, as May 20, 1683.31 There could scarcely have been another child, since Catherine Fenton died on May 2, 1684,32 and her husband did not remarry.33 Like his brothers and sisters whose birth records have been preserved, Elijah was born at Shelton Old Hall.34 The death of the boy’s father left him an orphan at the age of eleven.35 At that time his brother John, the inheritor of the estate, had already been married for a year; three years later his brother Thomas also married.36 Naturally, a family tradition of precocity attaches itself to the memory of the future poet. Robert Fenton says37 that while the more commonplace boys were at their games he used to climb into an oak tree near Newcastle and there study his lessons. The tree is identified with the “laureate grove” of the Epistle to Southerne. The matter is one of family piety and a persistent tradition that some may find pleasant. T. F. and Ward have him composing the Latin inscription for his father's grave at the age of eleven.38 As before indicated, the epitaph can now be more plausibly dated. Whatever the boy’s personality or early promise, something prompted the planning for him of a university education that was unique in his immediate family. Johnson surmises that he was educated because the size and situation of the clan rendered it imperative that he earn a living. The available birth dates of the children would hardly justify the supposition. Nor is a supposition of this sort really required. The three boys of the Fenton family all had vocations. John was a barrister. Thomas seems to have been a merchant. Elijah’s interests were doubtless literary and scholarly. Some elements in Elijah’s scholastic career do diverge from the picture of his background; the mere fact of university training is not one of them. Where the boy prepared for the university is tolerably certain, though no definite statement appears in any account before that of Ward. Ward announces39 that “his guardians” placed him in the Grammar School of Newcastle-under-Lyme. During the period Newcastle had a free grammar school, the institution having been established in 1602 through the benefaction of Richard Cleyton, of London.40 Since Elijah was a graduate of none of the better-known institutions of whose alumni lists have been printed, Ward’s statement, which also squares with the oak-tree tradition of the poet’s boyhood studiousness, seems plausible enough. At any rate, once made, it was accepted with considerable local enthusiasm. In 1894, the High School at Newcastle, the descendant of the old Grammar School, had a bust of the poet, modeled from a portrait originally in the possession of Thomas Fenton, town clerk of Newcastle in 1844 and the probable reviser of Ward’s biography, and offered a Fenton Prize for excellence in English composition.41 Ward’s vague reference to “guardians,” if not a mere variety of question-begging, strikes the fancy. One would have expected the prosperous elder brother, with his wife’s dowry augmenting the family fortune, to foster the training and career of the future poet. But throughout Elijah’s traceable career there is scant reference to John Fenton, although he survived the poet by better than a decade.42 Thomas’s name emerges with more frequency, and in one instance as that of a sponsor. As Ward’s family tree discloses, he named a child Elijah. The family tradition in regard to the poet comes down through Thomas’s descendants, rather than through the major line. As previously indicated, Thomas lived in Newcastle. The erection of John Fenton’s mansion there occurred “during the first three years of the eighteenth century”— that is, after Elijah’s school days. During his grammar-school period, the boy may have given at least one indication of his future interests. Robert Fenton found among the papers of the family a previously unpublished poem, entitled Cleopatra, stated in the manuscript to have been written in imitation of Chaucer, dated in the manuscript as of 1700, and signed “Elijah Fenton.”Robert Fenton quotes the poem in full43, with the expressed purpose of proving its author’s independence of Pope in the excellence of his couplet style. The composition is in couplets with some evident effort at epigrammatic effect. It is, however, work of either immaturity or incompetence. It lacks Fenton’s later aptitude for pleasing alliteration. Its stresses often fall awkwardly. Its rimes are abominably handled. The poem is fraught with an abundance of scarcely necessary triplets. It contains two attempts at the Alexandrine, customarily well used in Fenton’s later verse, one of which wanders into a fourteener. There is no evidence that the author had read Chaucer in the original. The only influence revealed is that of Dryden, a motto from whose 1674 Prologueat Oxford precedes the poem, and whose Fables, also of 1700, may have inspired the avowal of Chaucerian imitation. The triplets are perhaps imitative of Dryden’s later style. There is one unrhymed transitional verse broken after the second foot. The substance of the narrative follows All for Love. While I see no reason not to accept Cleopatra as an authentic composition by the youthful Fenton, left, as Robert Fenton believes, from the source of the manuscript, with his brother Thomas when he went down to Cambridge, the authenticity of the manuscript as an example in Fenton’s autograph may be open to question. Robert Fenton concluded the W. W. Lloyd book with a photostatic reproduction of the poem’s last five verses, the signature, and the date. This reproduction shows three sorts of divergence from the poet’s usual manuscript style, particularly from that of his earlier period. The first is in signature. Various other manuscripts signed by Fenton exist. In none of these did he use the signature Elijah Fenton. His mode of signinghimself was invariably E. Fenton. This is true in even the published works in which a printed signature appears, with two exceptions, Milton and Mariamne, both of which are late in his career. The second is in the matter of capitalization at the beginnings of lines of verse. Robert Fenton’s photostatic reproduction shows invariable initial capitalization. The manuscripts of Fenton’s non-Odyssey verses in the possession of the British Museum44, although not obviously hasty work, reveal a decidedly variable procedure in this respect. If in autograph, these must date from the volume of 1717. While the later manuscripts for Fenton’s books of the Odyssey45 almost always show initial capitalization, even here an initial and is often uncapitalized, andnever written with an A similar to the printed capital, as in the one instance in which it appears in the photostated five lines of Cleopatra. There are also divergences in handwriting and in spelling, perhaps of course chargeable to youth. The script of Cleopatra looks different from that of Fenton’s other manuscripts. This is particularly true of the signature, which is in Cleopatra very elaborate and elsewhere very unostentatious. As for spelling, Fenton’s 1717 manuscripts rarely use the apostrophe in possessive nouns. In the photostated five lines of Cleopatra, he has one opportunity to employ it, anddoes so. Elsewhere, Fenton rarely uses thy for the. In the photostated five lines, he has two opportunities to do so, and makes use of both. These details, though not insusceptible of other explanation, suggest that the manuscript discovered by Robert Fenton is a copy rather than an autograph. In any event, the poem itself is significant only in so far as it reveals Elijah’s early interest in the making of verses. It can scarcely have represented more than the fruit of a schoolboy’s leisure, perhaps preserved by fraternal interest. From the school at Newcastle, Elijah proceeded to Jesus College, Cambridge. Ward says that “friends” made possible his matriculation, arranging for him as a pensioner.46 The status is not quite correct. Alumni Cantabrigiensis has him admitted sizar July 1, 1700, matriculated in 1701, and scholar in 1701.His matriculation corresponds in date to the appointment of Dr. Charles Ashton, Bentley’s Tory opponent for the Regius professorship in 1717, to the mastership of Jesus.47 It thus coincides also with the beginning of a half century of decline in the enrollment and prestige of the college.48 In that decline, two features are worthy of note. One is the consistent increase in the proportion of sizars in the diminishing enrollment; the other is the growing tendency of students at Jesus to seek ordination. Both tendencies had begun during Elijah’s period at the institution. Between 1702 and 1706, of a total of ninety admissions, forty-four were sizars. In the same period, seventy-one persons received testimonials for orders, four more than the total who obtained degrees.49 Thus Fenton attended a college already tending to be frequented by students unable to pay for their education. His own was not paid for. He likewise attended an institution which had already, and even more particularly, become almost exclusively a training school for the church. Considering the wealth and social position of the Fenton family, the first fact seems strange. Yet it fits the tenor of Elijah’s later career and the probabilities in regard to his grammar-school preparation. Since there was apparently no decline in the fortunes of the family’s major branch (the mansion at Newcastle was being built during Elijah’s Jesus College period), one is almost driven to the conclusion that this branch did not interest itself in the future poet’s education.The second fact may permit one to infer the profession for which the boy was destined. Johnson, stating that Fenton “did not seek ordination at the hands of the non-juring clergy,” seems to imply that the church was the poet’s original destination; and a comparison of Ward’s, bringing Fenton into juxtaposition with “many clergymen,” appears to have a similar implication. Robert Fenton states50 specifically that he was destined for the clergy, but advances no evidence for the statement, while his phrasing indicates his dependence upon Ward and Johnson. The purposes of Jesus, however, tend to confirm the early accounts. If Fenton did not seek ordination, he was apparently almost unique among the students graduated during his period. Furthermore, a Robert Fenton was rector at Stoke from 1732 to 1760.51 Elijah’s brother John had a son Robert52; and this  may well have been the man. If so, it at least indicates that a vocation was not unacceptable to the family.To his statement regarding Elijah’s entrance at Jesus, Ward adds the pronouncement that he was a good student. At any rate, he received his baccalaureate degree early in 1705. His were not among the seventyone testimonials of the period. Nor did he seek a master’s degree, which would have made a real academic career possible. For this degree, he was to wait twenty-one years.53 Fenton thus departed from Jesus College without having secured adequate preparation for a career offering either real security or distinction. The departure hence becomes a significant event in his life. One easily believes that what is significant is the result of deliberate choice, and that what is unhappily significant is the result of deliberate sacrifice. It has been customary to state that Fenton left the university without natural terminal point in his education. He took his baccalaureate degree, did not trouble about the ordination which was the normal goal of his classmates, and went immediately into other employment. As for a master’s degree, one may not have been contemplated. Gray’s history shows no such degrees granted at Jesus during Fenton’s time there. To obtain one, the student would doubtless have been compelled to transfer to another college. Fenton was a nonpaying student; and for him such a transfer would probably have necessitated the formation of new pecuniary arrangements. So considered, the factor of nonjurorship loses some of its import. At the same time, there is good reason to believe that Fenton formed his heterodox opinions while at Jesus. The probable change in the vocation to which he was destined supports the view. The evidence for the actuality of the change is exclusively inferential; but it is evidence in support of a universally accepted tradition, and, as such, is not without force. The character of Fenton’s first employment is more conclusive. Leaving Jesus, he went immediately into the employ of a known non-juror. Finally, Jesus College was the sort of institution where a boy, particularly one from a Papist and Jacobite county, could have either contracted or fortified heterodox opinions. While the college as a whole had acquiesced in the Revolution of 1688, “nevertheless among the rank and file . . . there were a few adherents of the fallen Stuarts, . . . the most noteworthy of whom were Laurence Howell and Nathaniel Spinckes . . .; on the accession of George I . . . Samuel Townsend (a Fellow) refused the oaths".54 Although Jesus, unlike St.John’s55, where Fenton was later to have friends, was no non-jurors’ stronghold, there is evidence of religious and political controversy there in the period immediately after Fenton’s graduation. A letter of William Reneu’s56 of October 9, 1705, states that “the lads are up to their ears in division about High Church and Low Church, Whig and Tory.The conclusion is that Fenton’s non-jurorship dates from his period at Jesus, and that it induced him to renounce the church as a means of livelihood. Although his heterodoxy was probably not a view to which he subscribed at the time of his matriculation, it may have represented an opinion to which early familiarity rendered him readily hospitable. Accepted, it seems to have found no very vigorous expression, and assuredly necessitated no immediately evident sacrifice of very profound character, since he at once found suitable and doubtless congenial employment. This interpretation of the event is in accord with Fenton’s known character, which was reticent, modest, and unfanatical: the precise opposite of that of the typical political or religious rebel. Fenton’s very nonconformities ought to have a tinge of propriety; and dramatic renunciations ought to be foreign to their nature. The attributes of personality named kept Fenton from writing propagandist verse. For this reason two opinions as to the reason for his objections have arisen. Johnson, who was first specific about the matter, said that “he [Fenton] doubted the legality of the government, and refusing to qualify himself for public employment by the oaths required, left the university without a degree; but I never heard that the enthusiasm of opposition impelled him to separation from the church.” This is the prevailing tenor of subsequent accounts. Chalmers and Rose57 follow Johnson almost verbatim, although the latter omits the refusal to separate from the church; Robert Fenton quotes from Johnson.58 Ward declares that Fenton’s objections were political, not religious, “as has been supposed”; “he had imbibed opinions at variance with those of the governing powers, as to the claims of the exiled house of Stuart, and was too conscientious to take the oaths, as many clergymen did, with a secret resolution of breaking them upon a restoration of the old dynasty".59 The Dictionary of NationalBiography, however, notes that Fenton early sang and later republished the praises of Anne and Marlborough, and concludes that his heterodoxy must, hence, “have been religious rather than political.” Because the truth appears most satisfactorily as the sequence of Fenton’s career is traced, I prefer to postpone a complete consideration of the question. Some relevant details in the Staffordshire and family background, accounting for tolerance of either political or religious heterodoxy, but suggesting the orthodoxy of the family in both respects, have already been noted. The character of Jesus College has the only relation to the question which concerns us at the moment. In connection with the point made by the Dictionary of National Biography, it should be remarked that the rebels of Jesus reacted more strongly to the coronation of George than to the rule of Anne60. As for the precise question, throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, Jesus was religiously orthodox, with registration barred to both the Papist and the Protestant dissenter61. Fenton could not have revealed pronounced religious heterodoxy and escaped expulsion; there were no expulsions in 1705. At the same time, Jesus was probably more vigorous in suppressing ultra-Protestant heresies than in discouraging deviations from conformity of other character; its one expulsion for religious or political reasons between 1699 and the coronation of George I was that of the Quaker, Roger Kelsall62. The reason was probably the predominantly Tory and High Church tone of the college, which reflected the opinions of its master. Dr. Ashton made the institution’s one distinction in scholarship its achievements in the field of patristic theology63. He was himself the chosen opponent of the Whiggery and Latitudinarianism of Bentley64. While the character of Jesus would not preclude Fenton’s formation of tacit Romanist sympathies there as an accentuation of the High Church point of view, the heresies of the Jesus rebels were political; and the spirit of the institution would seem more likely to stimulate political than religious schism. Fenton certainly entered the college as a son of the English Church. The probability, needing, of course, later confirmation, is that he left it a merely political nonjuror. This is all the information I have regarding this publication. If you have information regarding this publication or anything regarding Elijah Fenton - English Poet (1683 to 1730) or information to share about this Fenton line, please let me know as we would love to share that information in future issues. You can contact me at the following addresses: Leslie E. Fenton718 Kensington LaneMansfield, TX 76063-2819E-Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 Stebbing Shaw, History of Staffordshire, London, 1793, p. 37. 2 Ibid., p. 43.3 John Ward, Borough of Stroke-upon-Trent, London, 1844, p. 422.4 S.W. Hutchinson, Archdeaconry of Stoke-upon-Trent, London, 1905. 5 Ward, op. cit., p. 422.6 Op. cit., p. 422.7 Elijah Fenton: His Poetry and Friends, Hanley, 1894, p 113 (footnote). Two hundred fifty copies of this book were privately printed and distributed among Staffordshire subscribers, most of whom were resident in Stoke and Newcastle. Lloyd, dilettante scholar and native of the county, had died before completely organizing the essay to which his name is attached. His notes upon Fenton's poetry were given form by George Fenton Sophia Beale contributed a eulogy of Lloyd himself. Robert Fenton did a prefactory essay devoted largely to quotation in extenso from Fenton's poetry, but included data upon the Fenton family's history, chiefly subsequent to the poet's death. There are also, however, some materials drawn from the family archives which, not otherwise available, cast light upon the poet's life.8 Op. cit, p. 422.9 Count and Countess, Orrery Papers, London, 1903, Introduction. 10 Loc. cit., p. 19.11 Theophilus Cibber, Lives of the Poets, London, 1753, Vol. 9, p. 165. 12 Ward, op. cit., p.422.13 Loc. cit., p. 12.14 Robert Fenton, loc. cit., p. 12.15 Parish records of Stoke, and the epitaph previously cited. 16 Op. cit., p. 413.17 Shaw, op. cit., p. 43.18 Ibid., p. 4019 Profession stated in the Alumni Cantabrigiensis entry for Elijah Fenton. Position and profession stated in T.F.'s letter, loc. cit. 20 Op. cit., Vol. 9, p. 165.21 Robert Fenton, loc. cit., p.55.22 Ward, op. cit., p. 421.23 Ibid., p. 422.24 Robert Fenton, loc. cit., p. 11.25 Loc. cit., p. 120.26 History of Staffordshire, London, 1908, Vol. 1, pp. 255-266. 27 Parish records.28 Loc. cit., p. 11.29 Ibid., p. 11 30 Details of marriages from Robert Fenton, loc. cit., p. 11. Additional details regarding John from Ward, op.cit., p. 421; regarding Thomas from documentary evidence affecting Elijah Fenton himself. 31 Loc.cit. T.F. vouched, as a member of the family, for the accuracy of his details; and in every instance in which this can be checked, with the exception of the explicable matter of the number of children, they are accurate. The semi-family biography of Ward accepted the date of birth. Robert Fenton (loc. cit., p. 11) gives the birth date as May 25, 1683, o. s. His authority does not appear. He states the birth dates of no other children, and the order in which he names the latter is rather obviously not that of their births. Except for a greater vagueness and the addition of some documentary materials previously indicated, his account of Elijah’s life follows that of Ward. In any event, where one is compelled to rely upon unverified family tradition, it seems to me best to accept that tradition in its earliest definite form, in this instance that of T. F.’s letter. 32 Parish records of Stoke.33 As indicated in his epitaph.34 So stated in Giles Jacob’s Poetical Register, London, 1723. Jacob states in his preface that he consulted all the living poets whose biographies he records, so that his source was doubtless Fenton himself. The birthplace disappeared from the accounts of Cibber and Johnson, and is still incorrectly stated in the biographical dictionaries. It appears, however, in T. F.’s letter and in the family biographies. 35 According to the parish records of Stoke, John Fenton died on October 20, 1694, the epitaph states at the age of fifty-six years.36 Ward, op. cit., p. 422.37 Loc. cit., p. 13.38 T. F.,  loc. cit.; Ward, op. cit., p. 413.39 Op. cit., p. 413. 40 Hutchinson, op. cit.41 Robert Fenton, loc. cit., p. 101. The bust and the prize were the benefactions of Joseph Mayer, of Liverpool, who believed himself a collateral descendant of Catherine Meare. 42 Ward, op. cit., p. 422.43 Loc. cit., pp. 180-186.44 Add. Manuscripts 26899.45 Add. Manuscripts 4809.46 Op. cit., p. 413.47 Arthur Gray, Jesus College, London, 1902, p. 141. 48 Ibid., p. 142.49 Ibid., p. 142.50 Loc. cit., p. 13.51 Hutchinson, op. cit.52 Ward, op. cit., p. 422.53 Alunini Cantabrigiensis. This dates the baccalaureate degree in 1704-5. The master’s was granted by Trinity Hall in 1726. Johnson brought Fenton out of Cambridge without even the baccalaureate, but he evidently confused the absence of testimonials with that of a degree. Both the master’s and the bachelor’s are mentioned and dated in T. F.’s letter (the bachelor’s as merely 1704, as in many subsequent accounts). The master’s has been ignored in many later sketches of Fenton’s life. In contrast with T. F., Ward dates it in 1706. The date is out of accord with the rest of his ordering of Fenton’s career, and may be an uncorrected misprint. Robert Fenton dates the master’s in both 1706 and 1726, apparently following both T. F. and Ward. He has also a double date for the termination of the Seven Oaks Headmastership, placing this in both 1710 and 1720. The reason seems to be a failure to attempt reconciliation of contradictory sources.54 Gray, op. cit., p. 137. Spinckes became a non-juring bishop. Howell wrote a  seditious libel on George I.55 At. St. John’s twenty Fellows refused the oath of conformity, and yet retained their fellowships until 1717. J. B. Mullinger, History of the University of Cambridge, 1888. 56 Summarized by Gray, op. cit., p. 148.57 Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary, London, 1814. Rose, General  Biographical Dictionary, London, 1853. 58 Loc. cit., p. 14.59 Op. cit., p. 413.60 Gray, op. cit., p. 137.61 Gray, op. cit., p. 138.62 Ibid p. 147.63 Ibid., p. 143.64 Ibid., p. 147.

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