Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkins, John (1758?-1841)
HAWKINS, JOHN (1758?–1841), miscellaneous writer, born about 1758, was the youngest son of Thomas Hawkins of Trewinnard, S. Erth, Cornwall, and M.P. for Grampound, by Anne, daughter of James Heywood of London. Hawkins was a man of considerable means, and devoted his long life to the study of literature, science, and art. He travelled in Greece and the East, and wrote dissertations ‘On the Syrinx of Strabo and the Passage of the Euripus,’ ‘On the site of Dodona,’ &c., which are printed in Walpole's ‘Memoirs of European and Asiatic Turkey’ (1818), and Walpole's ‘Travels in various Countries of the East.’
In 1806 Hawkins purchased Bignor Park, Sussex, the residence of the poetess Charlotte Smith. He rebuilt the house (1826–30), and collected a great number of valuable paintings, drawings, and antiquities.
Hawkins, who was a fellow of the Royal Society, wrote a number of papers on scientific subjects, most of them connected with the geology of Cornwall (a full list is given in Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i. 222, 223, iii. 1224). In 1826 he served the office of sheriff of Sussex. He died on 4 July 1841 at his seat, Trewithan, Cornwall. He married Hester, daughter of Humphrey Sibthorpe, M.P. for Lincoln, and had four sons and two daughters. The eldest, John Heywood, was M.P. for Newport, Isle of Wight, from 1833 to 1841.
[Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis; Gent. Mag. September 1841, pp. 322, 323; Davies Gilbert's Hist. of Cornwall, i. 358.]