Percival Stockdale


Percival Stockdale was an English poet, writer and reformer, active especially in opposing slavery.

Biography

Born 26 October 1736 at Branxton, Northumberland, he was the only child of Thomas Stockdale, vicar of the parish and perpetual curate of Cornhill-on-Tweed, and his wife, Dorothy Collingwood of Murton, Northumberland. After spending six years at Alnwick grammar school, he went in 1751 to the grammar school at Berwick-upon-Tweed. He became acquainted with the Greek and Latin classics, and acquired a taste for poetry.
In 1754 Stockdale entered the University of Aberdeen, with a bursary for the united colleges of St. Leonard and St. Salvador. The death of his father in 1755 left the family with money troubles, and he accepted the offer of a lieutenancy in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He joined Admiral John Byng 's fleet, which anchored in the Bay of Gibraltar in May 1756. Stockdale, with part of his regiment, was on board HMS Revenge, in the expedition sent, under the command of Byng and Temple West, to the relief of the besieged garrison of St. Philip on Menorca. He returned to England in October 1756, and in November 1757 he left the army with the pretext of poor health.
Introduced to Thomas Sharp, archdeacon of Northumberland, Stockdale was persuaded to take holy orders. At Michaelmas 1759 he was ordained deacon by Richard Trevor, bishop of Durham. Immediately afterwards he went to London as Sharp's substitute in the curacy and lectureship of Duke's Place, near Aldgate. He mixed with London literati, meeting David Garrick, Samuel Johnson, Sir William Browne, Oliver Goldsmith, John Hawkesworth, and Lord Lyttelton. In 1767, having no church employment, he visited Italy, and resided for two years at Villafranca, where he read and wrote. He returned to London in 1769.
Stockdale succeeded William Guthrie in editing The Critical Review, and edited the Universal Magazine in 1771. Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, appointed him chaplain of HMS Resolution, a guardship lying at Spithead; he was attached to the vessel for three years. In 1779 he contributed to the Public Advertiser political letters under the signature of "Agricola". According to his own account, he missed out on the work that became Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets.
After a brief time as tutor to the eldest son of Lord Craven, Stockdale was presented in 1780 by Sir Adam Gordon to the rectory of Hinxworth, Hertfordshire; while there he took priest's orders. In 1783 Lord-chancellor Thurlow presented him to the vicarage of Lesbury, Northumberland, and to this the Duke of Northumberland added the vicarage of Long Houghton, in the same county. On 28 October 1784 Archbishop John Moore conferred on him the Lambeth degree of M.A.
After paying a visit to Tangier for the sake of his health, Stockdale returned to Lesbury in 1790. His reaction to the Haitian Revolution of 1792 put him among the radical abolitionists. With William Roscoe, he defended the violence with which slaves liberated themselves.
Stockdale died at Lesbury on 14 September 1811, and was buried at Cornhill-on-Tweed.<

Works

Stockdale's major work was The Poet, a poem. He wrote also:
Stockdale famously eulogized Samuel Johnson's cat Hodge in his An Elegy on a Friend's Favourite Cat. The poem appeared in the Universal Magazine'' for May 1771.