John Codrington Bampfylde

English poet

John Codrington Warwick Bampfylde (or Bampfield; 27 August 1754 – 1796/1797) was an 18th-century English poet. He came from a prominent Devon family, his father being Sir Richard Bampfylde, 4th Baronet, and was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.^[1] He had financial problems, having fallen into dissipation on going to London. His romantic advances to Mary Palmer (later wife of Murrough O'Brien, 1st Marquess of Thomond), niece of Joshua Reynolds, were refused by her and discouraged by Reynolds, who expelled Bampfylde from the house. Bampfylde was subsequently arrested for breaking Reynolds's windows, and he spent the latter part of his life in a psychiatric hospital in London, briefly regaining his sanity before his death^[2]^[3] from tuberculosis.

His only published work was Sixteen Sonnets (1778), which attracted the attention of Robert Southey.

References

^ "Bampfylde, John Codrington Warwick (BMFD771JC)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
^ Postle, Martin. "'Mr Huddesford and Mr Bampfylde', Sir Joshua Reynolds, c.1778 | Tate". Tate. Retrieved 5 May 2018.
^ Basker, James G.; Gilder, Richard, eds. (2002). Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery, 1660-1810. Yale University Press. p. 266. ISBN 0300091729.

Leslie Stephen, "Bampfylde, John Codrington Warwick (1754–1796)", rev. S. C. Bushell, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1262, retrieved 25 June 2007. The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: "Bampfylde, John Codrington" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.