Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Parr
Ch X. 1816-1820
Samuel Parr to Hannah Edwards, [1813]
“Dear Mrs.
Edwards,—I write this to inform you that I am very well; and
that my friends in town are more numerous than ever. I have seen the Duke of Bedford. I have dined with the Duke of Norfolk, and with the Duke of Gloucester, at his Royal Highness’s
mansion; where I met Lord Erskine, who
calls upon me to-day, to give me some books. I dined last Monday with Lords
Donoughmore and Hutchinson; and met Mr. Grattan. He is by far the most wonderful man I ![]()
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have yet seen. Drs. Lambe and Winthrop1 wish me to dine with them. Never, never, never was I
so suitably or so enviably situated, as in the hospitable house of Mr. and Mrs.
Montagu. I am, &c.—S. P.”
Hannah Edwards [née Wilson] (1764 c.-1841 fl.)
Of Teignmouth, a friend of Samuel Parr who was twice married, to a Mr Bellamy of Hazeley
House, and to John Edwards of Stankhill. At the time of the 1841 Warwickshire census she
was again living with the Bellamys.
Thomas Erskine, first baron Erskine (1750-1823)
Scottish barrister who was a Whig MP for Portsmouth (1783-84, 1790-1806); after defending
the political radicals Hardy, Tooke, and Thelwall in 1794 he was lord chancellor in the
short-lived Grenville-Fox administration (1806-07).
Henry Grattan (1746-1820)
Irish statesman and patriot; as MP for Dublin he supported Catholic emancipation and
opposed the Union.
John Hely- Hutchinson, third earl of Donoughmore (1787-1851)
The eldest son of Francis Hely-Hutchinson (1759-1827), he served in the Peninsular War,
fought at Waterloo, and was a Whig MP for co. Tipperary (1826–30, 1831–32) before
succeeding his uncle in the title.
William Lambe (1765-1847)
Educated at St John's College, Cambridge, he was a physician in Warwick, where he knew
Samuel Parr, and from 1804 in London, where he was a fellow of the Royal College of
Physicians. He was an advocate for vegetarianism and acquaintance of Shelley and
Keats.
Anne Dorothea Bridget Montagu [née Benson] (1774-1856)
The daughter of Edward Benson; after a marriage to Thomas Skepper she became the third
wife of Basil Montagu in 1808; her daughter Anne Benson Skepper married the poet Bryan
Waller Procter.
Basil Montagu (1770-1851)
An illegitimate son of the fourth earl of Sandwich, he was educated at Charterhouse and
Christ's College, Cambridge, and afterwards was a lawyer, editor, and friend of Samuel
Romilly, William Godwin, and William Wordsworth.
Stephen Winthrop (1767 c.-1819)
The son of Benjamin Winthrop, director of the Bank of England, he was educated at St
John's College, Cambridge, and Edinburgh University, and was a physician at Bury St Edmunds
(1797-1803), Warwick (1803-10), London, and Tunbridge.
