Home > Winthrop Mackworth Praed

He was born in London. The additional family name of Praed was derived from the marriage of the poet's great-grandfather with a Cornish heiress. Winthrop's father, William Mackworth Praed, was a serjeant-at-law. His mother belonged to the English branch of the New England family of Winthrop. In 1814 Praed was sent to Eton College, where he founded a manuscript periodical called Apis matina. This was succeeded in October 1820 by the Etonian, a paper projected and edited by Praed and Walter Blount , which appeared every month until July 1821, when the chief editor, who signed his contributions "Peregrine Courtenay," left Eton, and the paper died. Henry Nelson Coleridge , William Sidney Walker , and John Moultrie were the three best known of his collaborators on this periodical, which was published by Charles Knight, and of which details are given in Knight's Autobiography and in Maxwell Lyte 's Eton College.

Before Praed left school he had established, over a shop at Eton, a "boys' library," the books of which were later amalgamated in the School Library. His career at Trinity College, CambridgeTrinity College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Trinity is the largest and richest of the colleges in Cambridge, and is now a home to around 600 undergraduates, 300 graduates, and over 160 Fellows. was a brilliant one. He gained the Browne medal for GreekThe Greek language ( /Elini'k{/) is an Indo-European language which has existed from around the 14th century BC in the Cretan inscriptions called Linear B. Mycenaean Greek of this period is distinguished from later Classical or Ancient Greek of the 8th ce verse four times, and the chancellor's medal for English verse twice. He was bracketed third in the classical tripos in 1825Events January 4 King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies dies and is succeeded by his son Francis I of the Two Sicilies. February 9 After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the United States House of Representatives elects John, won a fellowship at his college in 1827Events February 20 Battle of Huzaingo February 28 The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is incorporated, becoming the first railroad offering commercial transportation of both people and freight. March 7 Ellen Turner is abducted The Shrigley Abduction case begins, and three years later carried off the Seatonian prize. At the UnionThe Cambridge Union Society commonly referred to simply as the Cambridge Union is the largest student society at the University of Cambridge. It was founded on February 13th, 1815 as a union of three debating societies and quickly rose to prominence in Un his speeches were only rivalled by those of Macaulay and of Charles Austin , who subsequently made a great reputation at the parliamentary bar. The character of Praed during his university life is described by Bulwer Lytton in the first volume of his Life.

Praed began to study lawThis article is about law in society. For other possible meanings, see law (disambiguation). Law (a loanword from Danish-Norwegian lov , in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules of conduct which mandate or proscribe (or both) specified relationshi, and in 1829 was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. On the Norfolk circuit, his prospects of advancement were bright, but his inclination was towards politics, and after a year or two he took up political life. Whilst at Cambridge he tended to Whiggism, and up to the end of 1829 he continued to have these sympathies, but during the agitation for parliamentary reform his opinions changed, and when he was returned to parliament for St Germans ( December 17, 1830), his election was due to the Tory party. He sat for that borough until December 1832, and on its extinction contested the borough of St Ives, within the limits of which the Cornish estates of the Praeds were situated.

The pieces he wrote on this occasion were collected in a volume printed at Penzance in 1833 and entitled Trash, dedicated without respect to James Halse , M.P., his successful opponent. Praed sat for Great Yarmouth from 1835 to 1837, and was secretary to the Board of Control during Sir Robert Peel's short administration. He sat for Aylesbury from 1837 until his death. During the progress of the Reform Act of 1832 he advocated the creation of three-cornered constituencies, in which each voter should have the power of giving two votes only, and maintained that freeholds within boroughs should confer votes for the boroughs and not for the county. Neither of these suggestions was then adopted, but the former ultimately formed part of the Reform Act of 1867. In 1835, he had married Helen Bogle. He died of tuberculosis at Chester Square, London.

His poems were first edited by R. W. Griswold (New York, 1844); another American edition, by W. A. Whitmore, appeared in 1859; an authorized edition with a memoir by Derwent Coleridge appeared in 1864: The Political and Occasional Poems of W. M. Praed ( 1888), edited with notes by his nephew, Sir George Young , included many pieces collected from various newspapers and periodicals. Sir George Young separated from his work some poems, the work of his friend Edward Marlborough Fitzgerald, generally confused with his. Praed's essays, contributed to various magazines, were published in Morley's Universal Library in 1887.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911 Britannica