infant son, who on Sir William's death in 1664 succeeded to the title, and by his marriage with one Sarah Holled became father of two sons, William and Spencer. The former became Lord Chancellor, and an Earl, in 1706. Spencer having been tried for murder and acquitted,[1] became Chief Justice of Chester, and a Judge of the Common Pleas. He died in 1728, leaving three sons, William, John and Ashley, and several daughters. One of these married Colonel Madan, and became the mother of Martin Madan, whose name will occur several times in this volume, and of Frances Maria, who married her cousin Major Cowper, and became one of Cowper's constant correspondents.
The second of the three sons became the Rev. John Cowper, Chaplain to King George II, and Rector of Great Berkhamstead. He married Ann Donne; and at the rectory (or as her son afterwards called it, "the pastoral house") she gave birth to the future poet on the 26th of November (O.S. 15th), 1731. The house was pulled down to make room for a new rectory about thirty years ago. His parents had five other children, all of whom died in infancy except John. He lived until manhood, but his birthday was a heavy day for Berkhamstead parsonage. The mother died at the age of thirty-four.[2] It was the 14th of November, 1737. William therefore was just six years old. In what sacred remembrance the gentle child held her love and care of him we shall find in more than one passage of his life. When heavy clouds gathered round his spirit in years after, and seemed altogether to hide the blessing of God from him, the image of his mother remained clear in his memory, one bright spot which told him that there was a Heaven above. The gift of her picture, which he received fifty-three years after her death, gave him the occasion to pour out all his love and gratitude in what is probably the most touching elegy in the English language.
The death of his mother, generally the heaviest loss which a child can have, was a more than ordinary calamity here. He was delicate in body, sensitive and nervous in mind. His father, zealous towards his flock, and, according to his son's testimony, labouring to do them good, appears not to have understood his child's extreme need of sympathy and care. Within a year of his mother's death the poor boy was sent to school at a Dr. Pitman's, at Markyate Street, a straggling, unattractive village between St. Alban's and Dunstable. There he remained for two years, the victim of systematic bullying from some of his school companions. His shyness, sensibility, ill-health, were all converted into means of tormenting him. There was one boy in particular who persecuted him so relentlessly that Cowper writes in his autobiography, "I had such a dread of him, that I did not dare lift my eyes to his face. I
- ↑ Lord Campbell gives the case at length (Chancellors, iv. 260). He decides that the verdict was a righteous one, though the case was not without suspicion. Macaulay (History of England, chapter xxv.) holds the charge to be absolutely groundless, got up out of nothing but political spite.)
- ↑ She is buried within the altar-rails of Berkhamstead Church.
