John Collinson (1782 - 1857)

Born 16 May 1782 in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England

Husband of Amelia (King) Collinson — married 20 Apr 1802 in Alveston, Gloucestershire, England

Descendants

Died 14 Feb 1857 at age 74 in Boldon, Durham, England

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Biography

John Collinson Esq, and Amelia King were married in Alveston, Gloucestershire on 20 April 1802 ^[1]

The 1851 census showed John and his family living in St Luke's Chelsea. John was age 69, the Rector of Bolden, Durham, and born Bristol, Gloucestershire. His wife Amelia was 67 years old and born in Wendover, Buckinghamshire. Also in the household were their son Thomas Bernard, age 29, (a captain in the Royal Engineers), and their daughters Amelia age 26, Sophia age 24 and Julia Cecilia Dewinton (widow) age 38. All four children were born in Gateshead, Co Durham. ^[2]

John passed away in Boldon on 14 February 1857 ^[3]

His memorial inscription reads:

• To the memory of John Collinson, son of the Rev John Collinson, MA, Rector of Gateshead, and Amelia his wife. A youth of great promise who died of consumption May 18 1826 in the 18th year of his age. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Also to the memory of Frances Sybil and Julia Cecilia, infant daughters of the said John and A Collinson. Also of Caroline Elizabeth Octavia, wife of C Rawson, and daughter of the above, who died Oct 21 1850 aged 34. Also in grateful memory of the same Rev John Collinson and Amelia his wife (daughter of Mrs Elizabeth King) who loving and beloved together, worked for 54 years of which 30 in this Parish and 17 in the Parish of Boldon, and who departed J C on the 14 Feb 1857 at Boldon, A C on the 2 Aug 1871 at Ealing. Leaving 12 of their chidren to bear witness that a good man leaveth an inheritence to his children's children.

Additional Biography

— the following biography and sources for John Collinson focus primarily on his relationship to William Gifford and John Murray, editor and publisher, respectively, of the influential conservative periodical the Quarterly Review. The biography and sources are by Jonathan Cutmore, author of John Murray's Quarterly Review: Letters 1807-1843 (Liverpool University Press, 2019), from his Writing and Reading the Quarterly Review (manuscript, 2015), used by permission. Jonathan Cutmore (c) 2021

The son of Richardson Collinson, clerk, of Bristol, John Collinson was educated at Winchester, where he obtained the gold medal in composition. He matriculated, aged 17, in June 1798 at Queen’s College, Oxford (BA 1803, MA 1806). His uncle, Septimus Collinson (1739-1827), was provost of Queen’s. Collinson was ordained deacon by George Pelham, Bishop of Bristol, in 1803. Three years later he presented the Bampton Lecture. In 1810, Bishop Shute Barrington, a relative, collated him to the northeastern rectory of Gateshead in succession to Phillpotts, the future Bishop of Exeter, a man who became a reviewer for the influential London periodical the Quarterly Review. (Collinson dedicated his 1813 Bampton Lectures to Barrington.) He would remain at Gateshead for nearly thirty years. At the end of Dec. 1839, he removed to the rectory of Boldon. He was also at one time or another perpetual curate of Lamesly, rector of Durham, rector of Mortlake, near London, and honorary canon of Durham (1844).

Collinson’s wife, Amelia King (1783-1871), whom he married in Apr. 1802, was from a family of remarkable philanthropists. Amelia King’s mother, Frances Elizabeth King (1757-1821), who, after her husband died lived with John and Amelia for a time, was a women’s welfare advocate. Amelia’s uncle, Sir Thomas Bernard, the founder of the Bettering Society, published with the Quarterly’s publisher, the London bookseller-publisher John Murray.

Of their fifteen children, many of whom died in childhood or early adulthood, the most notable were the Arctic explorer, Admiral Sir Richard Collinson (1811-1883), and Julia Cecilia Collinson (later Stretton, then de Winton; 1812-1878). An author of children’s books, Stretton’s autobiographical novel, The Valley of a Hundred Fires (1860), reflects aspects of life with her parents. Stretton’s first husband, Walter de Winton, was a reform member of Parliament.

Another of Collinson’s daughters, Charlotte, married Arthur Shadwell, a son of vice-chancellor Sir Lancelot Shadwell, who was a charter subscriber to the Quarterly Review. One of Collinson’s friends, Sir John Richardson, to whom he dedicated his Observations on the History of the Preparation for the Gospel (1830), was related to Shadwell by marriage.

Collinson was a friend of the noted bibliophile Thomas Frognall Dibdin, a man who through the Roxburghe Club knew the Quarterly Review co-founder Reginald Heber. Collinson retired to Soulby, Westmorland. He died 17 Jan. 1857 at West Boldon, Durham, aged 76.

Evidence for Collinson’s particular brand of churchmanship is mixed. The Gentleman’s Magazine described him as a ‘Churchman of the old school, moderate in his opinions, free from all party extremes’. If so, his religious posture was compatible with The Quarterly’s editor’s, William Gifford’s, ‘high and dry’ orthodoxy. He seems, indeed, to have walked a fine line between High and Low. His friendship with Richardson and his emphasis on structured devotions in his preface to his Family Prayers for Eight Weeks (1857) suggests High Church leanings. In his Bampton lectures, however, he asserts the reformed nature of the Church of England, denies the doctrine of infallibility, and emphasizes the primacy of Scripture. In the same work, he states that the Gospel ‘cannot be planted or propagated without ministers’. That he was a subscriber to the evangelical George Stanley Faber’s Origin of Pagan Idolatry (1816), says nothing definitive about his churchmanship, but, to judge from the list of other subscribers, much about his membership in the nation’s conservative establishment.

By the evidence of his association with relatives of the Unitarian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (see Chapple, p. 385), he was not, at least in his personal relations, bigoted against Unitarians. He did, however, in his Bampton Lectures speak against Unitarian interpretations of the Gospel and of the early church fathers.

Collinson was the author of a brief biography of his uncle Septimus and of a Life of Thuanus, a post-Nicene father. He also wrote some teetotal volumes and in 1821 he contributed ‘Provision for the Poor’ to Gentleman’s Magazine.

Although no articles in the Quarterly Review have been identified as Collinson’s, he certainly was a contributor, probably of reviews on religious topics. We know that Collinson wrote for the Quarterly from a letter John Wilson Croker wrote to John Murray: ‘remember the necessity of absolute secrecy on this point, and indeed on all others. If you were to publish such names as Cohen and Croker and Collinson and Coleridge, the magical WE would have little effect, and your Review would be absolutely despised’ (29 Mar. 1823; quoted in Samuel Smiles, Memoir of John Murray, vol. 2, pp. 57-58). We need look no further than his membership with Croker in the Literary Society, to which he was elected in 1807, for an association that led to his participation in the Quarterly. That he was numbered among this illustrious group speaks volumes about his social and intellectual connections.

Sources

1. ↑ "England Marriages, 1538–1973 ," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NFVX-4BM : 10 December 2014), John Esq Collinson and Amelia King, 20 Apr 1802; citing Alveston, Gloucestershire, England, reference item 2, index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City; FHL microfilm 1,595,498.
2. ↑ "England and Wales Census, 1851," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:SGF6-3FS : 8 November 2017), John Colinson, Saint Luke Chelsea, Middlesex, England; citing Saint Luke Chelsea, Middlesex, England, p. 34, from "1851 England, Scotland and Wales census," database and images, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : n.d.); citing PRO HO 107, The National Archives of the UK, Kew, Surrey.
3. ↑ (https://www.findmypast.co.uk) Northumberland and Durham Memorial Inscriptions

Education - Collinson son of Richard of Bristol , Clerk Queens college Oxford, Matric 14.6.1798 age 17 BA 1803. MA 1806, Perpectual Curate of Lamesley , Rector of Boldon, Durham. - details from The Alumni Oxonienses 1715-1886 Vol 5 page 280 on Oxford Education Records on The Genealogist Web site

NOTE SEE PROFILE COLLINSON 828 AS THERE APPEARS TO BE 2 REVEREND JOHN COLLINSON PROFILE 828 IS ALSO THE PERPECTUAL CURATE OF LAMSELEY DURHAM ACCORDING TO 1851 CENSUS

• Parish Register. Baptisms. Cirencester, Gloucestershire. John fil John and Mary Collinson, born 16 April 1782, baptized 25 May 1782.

• Parish Register. Marriages. Alveston, St Helen, Gloucestershire. Folio 45, number 134. John Collinson of the Parish of St. Augustine, Bristol and Amelia King of this Parish, spinster, 20 April 1802. Witnesses: Henry King. Elizabeth Ingilby. Harriet Richardson.

• Will, PRO PROB 11/2249.

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography articles on Richard Collinson, Septimus Collinson, and Frances Elizabeth King. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography incorrectly states John Collinson’s birth date as c. 1791.

• D. Sykes, Local Records … of Northumberland and Durham (2 vols, 1833).

• T. F. Dibin, A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England (1838).

• J. Latimer, Local Records … of … Northumberland and Durham … 1832-1857 (1857).

• J. Collinson, ‘Preface’, Family Prayers for Eight Weeks (1857).

• Gentleman’s Magazine, 3rd ser., 2 (1857), p. 302.

• L.L. Cameron, The Life of Mrs. Cameron (1873), p. 31.

• M. E. G. Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1889–1891 (2 vols. 1901), I, p. 154.

• F. W. D. Manders, A History of Gateshead (1973).

• J. Chapple, Elizabeth Gaskell: The Early Years (1997), pp. 369, 385.

• Clergy of the Church of England Database.