Chauncy Townshend

Chauncy Hare Townshend, whose surname was spelt by his parents as Townsend (20 April 1798, Godalming, Surrey – 25 February 1868), was a 19th-century English poet, clergyman, mesmerist, collector, dilettante and hypochondriac. He is mostly remembered for bequeathing his collections to the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) and the Wisbech & Fenland Museum in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. He added an 'h' to his surname in 1835, upon inheriting; his first name was often spelled "Chauncey". Early life Townshend was the only son of Henry Hare Townsend, whose maternal grandfather was Henry Hare, 3rd Baron Coleraine, and whose father (and thus Chauncy's grandfather) was James Townsend, Lord Mayor of London from 1772 – 1773 and a member of parliament. It was a rich family, with properties in Norfolk, London, and Switzerland, and the young Chauncy was educated at Eton College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He graduated BA in 1821 and MA in 1824, and won the Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1817 for his poem Jerusalem. He also played one game of first-class cricket for a Kent side in 1827. Life as a poet Townshend met the poet Robert Southey in 1815, and through him met the Wordsworths and Coleridges. A sonnet on John Clare was published in the Morning Post in 1820. " There is a vivid lightning of the breast, Flash'rt from a kindred spark of poesy.