John Moultrie (poet) - Life

Life

He was born in Great Portland Street, London, on 31 December 1799, at the house of his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Fendall; he was the eldest son of George Moultrie, rector of Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire, by his wife Harriet (died 1867). His father was the son of John Moultrie of South Carolina.

After preliminary education at Ramsbury, Wiltshire, Moultrie was in 1811 sent to Eton College; John Keate, whom he annoyed by a visit to Thomas Gray's monument at Stoke Poges, was then headmaster. among his friends were William Sidney Walker, Lord Morpeth, Richard Okes, John Louis Petit, Henry Nelson Coleridge and Edward Coleridge, and Winthrop Mackworth Praed. He composed with great facility in Latin, but was indifferent to school studies, distinguishing himself as a cricketer, an actor, and wit .

In October 1819 Moultrie entered as a commoner Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became intimate with Thomas Babington Macaulay, Charles Austin, and others of their set. Proceeding M.A. in 1822, he spent time at the Middle Temple, but after acting for some time as tutor to the three sons of Lord Craven, he gave up the law and decided to take holy orders; he had an offer of the living of Rugby, Warwickshire by Lord Craven in 1825. In 1825 he was also ordained, and on 28 July in that year he married Harriet Margaret Fergusson, sister of James Fergusson.

He had the parsonage at Rugby rebuilt, and went to reside there in 1828. Moultrie arrived in the parish almost simultaneously with Thomas Arnold's acceptance of the headmastership of Rugby School, and they became firm friends. Writing to Derwent Coleridge, Moultrie's close friend Bonamy Price described the reciprocal influence of these two men.

He died on 26 December 1874 at Rugby of smallpox which he had caught from a parishioner whom he was visiting. He was buried in the parish church, to which an aisle was added in his memory. His gravestone says "The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep".