Objekt VI/iv/13 - Gotham: A Poem

CHURCHILL, CHARLES, eldest son of Charles Churchill (adm. 1717/8, qv); b. Feb 1731/2; adm. (aged 9) May 1741; KS (Capt. ) 1745; left 1748 [or 1747 ?]; St. John’s Coll. Cambridge, adm. pens. 8 Jul 1748; ordained deacon (Wells) 22 Sep 1754, priest (Rochester for London) 19 Dec 1756; Curate, South Cadbury and Sparkford, Somerset, 1754-6, and to his father at Rainham, Essex, 1756-8; Curate and Lecturer, St. John the Evangelist, Westminster, 1758-63; became involved in debt, and was in danger of imprisonment until befriended by Pierson Lloyd (qv), who induced the creditors to accept a composition; author of the poems The Rosciad and The Apology, published in 1761; by their sale he is said to have cleared no less than £2000; became an intimate friend of John Wilkes, with whom he worked on The North Briton; his poems satirised Hogarth, Bute, Sandwich, and others; his literary career, although brief, was brilliant; although he led a reckless and extravagant life, his generosity was undoubted and he remained an unwavering friend of Robert Lloyd (qv); William Cowper (qv) held him in high estimation as a poet and called him the “great Churchill” (Works of William Cowper, 1836, vi, 9-10); for an account of Byron’s visit to his grave at Dover, see Lord Broughton’s Recollections of a Long Life, i, 335; his collected works were published in two volumes, 1763-4; m. c. 1749 Martha Scott, Westminster; d. at Boulogne, 4 Nov 1764. DNB.