Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Drury, Henry (1812-1863)
DRURY, HENRY (1812–1863), archdeacon of Wilts, eldest son of Henry Joseph Thomas Drury (1778–1841), by his wife Caroline, daughter of A. W. Taylor of Boreham Wood, Hertfordshire, and grandson of Joseph Drury (1750–1834), was born at Harrow 11 May 1812. After passing through Harrow with distinction he was admitted minor pensioner of Caius College, Cambridge, 14 June 1831, and began residence in the following October (College Register). In 1833 he won the Browne medal for the Latin ode, and in 1835 that for the epigrams. An eye complaint prevented further academic successes as an undergraduate. In 1837 he took the ordinary B.A. degree, proceeding M.A. in 1840. In 1838 he became classical lecturer at Caius, but, having been ordained, he left Cambridge in 1839 to take sole charge of Alderley, Gloucestershire, a curacy which he exchanged the following year for that of Bromham, Wiltshire. Drury, together with some friends, projected and published the ‘Arundines Cami,’ a collection of translations into Latin and Greek verse by different Cambridge men. The first edition was published in a beautiful form in 1841, and four subsequent editions appeared during Drury's lifetime; a sixth, after his death, was edited by Mr. H. J. Hodgson in 1865. These successive editions contained several new pieces. Drury became rector of Alderley in 1843, and two years later vicar of Bremhill with Foxham and Highway, Wiltshire, a preferment which he received from Dr. Denison, bishop of Salisbury, to whom, and his successor in the see, Dr. Hamilton, he was examining chaplain. In 1855 he was installed prebendary of Shipton in Salisbury Cathedral, was appointed chaplain to the House of Commons by Mr. Speaker Denison in 1857 (Gent. Mag. 3rd ser. iii. 454), and became archdeacon of Wilts in July 1862. He died at Bremhill 25 Jan. 1863, after two days' illness. On 13 Dec. 1843 he married Amelia Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the Rev. Giles Daubeny, rector of Lydiard Tregoze, Wiltshire (Gent. Mag. new ser. xxi. 194). ‘After taking holy orders,’ writes Mr. H. J. Hodgson, ‘Mr. Drury proved himself a sound theologian and a valuable assistant to the bishop of his diocese, an earnest preacher, and an active parish priest. … As a friend and companion he was most genial and affectionate, possessed of lively wit and humour, full of anecdote and badinage, but tempered with excellent tact and judgment, all combined with a modesty and absence of self-assertion.’
[Information kindly communicated by H. J. Hodgson, esq., and the Master of Caius; Burke's Landed Gentry, 4th edit., p. 395; Gent. Mag. 3rd ser. xiv. 660–1; Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1860, p. 175.]