William Cowper

The family of Cowper appears to have held, for several centuries, a respectable rank among the merchants and gentry of England. We learn from the life of the first Earl Cowper, in the Biographia Britannica, that his ancestors were inhabitants of Sussex, in the reign of Edward IVth. The name is found repeatedly among the sheriffs of London; and William Cowper (relative of the poet), who resided as a country gentleman in Kent, was created a baronet by King Charles I. in 1641. This gentleman was a writer of English verse, and, with rare munificence, bestowed both an epitaph and a monument on that illustrious divine, the venerable Hooker. But the family rose to higher distinction in the beginning of the 18th century, by the remarkable circumstance of producing two brothers, both who obtained a seat in the House of Peers by their eminence in the profession of law. The father of our poet William Cowper, was Rev. John Cowper, who took his degrees in divinity, was chaplain to King George II., and resided at his Rectory of Great Berkamstead, in Hertfordshire, the scene of the poet's infancy.

(From the Memoir of the Early Life of William Cowper, Esq., written by himself):--
"At six years old, I was taken from the nursery, and from the immediate care of a most indulgent mother, and sent to a considerable school in Bedfordshire. Here I had hardships of different kinds to conflict with which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with which I had been treated at home. But my chief affliction consisted in my being singled out from all the other boys by a lad about fifteen years of age, as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the cruelty of his temper. ... The cruelty of this boy, which he had long practised in so secret a manner that no creature suspected it, was at length discovered. He was expelled from the school, and I was taken from it.

"From hence, at eight years old, I was sent to Mr. D., an eminent surgeon and oculist, having very weak eyes, and being in danger of losing one of them. I continued a year in this family, where religion was neither known nor practised; and from thence was despatched to Westminster. Whatever seeds of religion I might carry thither, before my seven years' apprenticeship to the classics was expired, they were all marred and corrupted; the duty of the school-boy swallowed up every other; and I acquired Latin and Greek at the expense of a knowledge much more important. ... At the age of eighteen, being tolerably furnished with a grammatical knowledge, but as ignorant in all points of religion as the satchel at my back, I was taken from Westminster; and, having spent about nine months at home, was sent to acquire the practice of the law with an attorney. There I might have lived and died without hearing or seeing anything that might remind me of a single Christian duty, had it not been that I was at liberty to spend my leisure time (which was well nigh all my time) at my uncle's [Ashley Cowper], in Southampton Row. By this means I had indeed an opportunity of seeing the inside of a church, whither I went with the family on Sundays, which probably I should otherwise never have seen.

"At the expiration of this term, I became, in a manner, complete master of myself; and took possession of a complete set of chambers in the Temple, at the age of twenty-one. This being a critical season of my life, and one upon which much depended, it pleased my all-merciful Father in Jesus Christ to give a check to my rash and ruinous career of wickedness at the very onset. I was struck, not long after my settlement in the Temple, with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish for those studies to which I had before been closely attached; the classics had no longer any charms for me; I had need of something more salutary than amusement, but I had no one to direct me where to find it.
At length I met with Herbert's Poems; and gothic and uncouth as they were; I yet found in them a strain of piety which I could not but admire. This was the only author I had any delight in reading. I pored over him all day long; and though I found not here, what I might have found, a cure for my malady, yet it never seemed so much alleviated as while I was reading him."

In 1763, through family connections, he accepted a clerkship of the journals in the House of Lords. A rival faction, however, challenged his appointment and the ordeal caused Cowper to enter Nathaniel Cotton's Collegium Insanorum at St. Albans. While there he was converted to Evangelicalism. In 1765, he moved to Huntingdon and took a room with the Rev. Morley Unwin and his wife Mary. Unwin died of a riding accident in 1767 and Cowper and Mary Unwin moved together to the town of Olney in 1768. They were not separated until her death in 1796. While at Olney, Cowper became close friends with the Evangelical clergyman John Newton; together they co-authored the Olney Hymns, which was first published in 1779 and included Newton's famous hymn "Amazing Grace." Of the 68 hymns Cowper wrote, "Oh for a closer walk with God" and "God moves in a mysterious way" are the most well known.

In 1773, Cowper became engaged to Mary Unwin, but he suffered another attack of melancholia. He had terrible nightmares, believing that God has rejected him. Cowper would never again enter a church or say a prayer. When he recovered his health, he kept busy by gardening, carpentry, and keeping animals. In spite of periods of acute depression, Cowper's twenty-six years in Olney and later at Weston Underwood were marked by great achievement as poet, hymn-writer, and letter-writer. His first volume of poetry, Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple was published in 1782 to wide acclaim. His work was compared to late Neo-Classical writers like Samuel Johnson as well as to poets such as Thomas Gray. At the time of his death, his Poems had already reached their tenth printing.

William Cowper died of dropsy on April 25, 1800. From the "Sketch of the Life of Cowper," by Dr. Samuel Johnson, 'On Sunday, the twentieth, he seemed a little revived. On Monday he appeared dying, but recovered so much as to eat a slight dinner. Tuesday and Wednesday he grew apparently weaker every hour. On Thursday he sat up as usual in the evening. In the course of the night, when exceedingly exhausted, Miss Perowne offered him some refreshment. He rejected it with these words, the very last that he was heard to utter, "What can it signify?"'
He was buried in St. Edmund's Chapel [now called the Chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury] in the church of East Dereham, on Saturday, May 2nd, attended by several of his relations.

In Memory of
WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ.
Born in Hertfordshire,
1731,
Buried In This Church.
Ye, who with warmth the public triumph feel
Of talents dignified by sacred zeal,
Here, to devotion's bard devoutly just,
Pay your fond tribute due to Cowper's dust!
England, exulting in his spotless fame,
Ranks with her dearest sons his favourite name.
Sense, fancy, wit, suffice not all to raise
So clear a title to affection's praise,
His highest honors to the heart belong;
His virtues form'd the magic of his song.