A Pindarick Ode on Painting: Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq.Morrison, Thomas
General
A Pindarick Ode on Painting: Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq.
Morrison, Thomas
Painting -- Poetry
Upon his marriage Morrison had necessarily resigned his fellowship of
New College, and two years later he also gave up the college living in
Cambridgeshire; the benefices that he afterwards held were all in the
diocese of Exeter. In 1736 he was made a prebendary of Exeter and became
Rector of Wear Giffard; the following year, after obtaining a
dispensation to hold the two livings together, he was also instituted to
High Bickington, which, however, he resigned in 1742. In 1744 he became
Rector of Littleham, soon afterwards resigning Wear Giffard; and
finally, in 1758, after resigning Littleham in its turn, he was
instituted to Langtree, of which parish he continued Rector until his
death twenty years later. The presentations to these livings were made
as follows: to Wear Giffard by Lord Clinton, Lord Lieutenant of the
county from 1721 to 1733, whose seat was at Castle Hill near Barnstaple;
to High Bickington and to Littleham by John Basset of Heanton--who was
patron of half a dozen livings; to Langtree by John Rolle Walter of
Bicton in South Devon and Stevenstone House near Great Torrington,
Member of Parliament for Exeter.
These parishes all lie within six miles of Great Torrington where
Morrison appears to have been resident from at least as early as 1750.
In his answers to the Bishop's queries of 1744 he had, however, declared
himself to be resident partly in Huntshaw, a parish adjoining Wear
Giffard; and--for reasons of his health and the education of his
children--partly at Westleigh on the mouth of the Torridge, a few miles
off. In which intervening year he established himself at Great
Torrington is not known.
Meanwhile, he had made two further marriages: in 1739 to Margaret,
daughter of the Rev. Robert Ham and widow of John Ham of Widhays, who
died in 1744; and in 1745 to Honour, daughter of Sir Thomas Bury and
widow of the Rev. George Bussell, who died at Great Torrington in 1750.
Both these later marriages were childless.
Hooper Morrison followed his father into the Church and became Rector of
Atherington near Barnstaple. In 1769 he bought the property of Yeo Vale,
some five miles from Great Torrington. Eleanora Morrison, who never
married and seems to have lived with her father until his death, sat to
Reynolds in her younger days; the portrait then painted, which was
formerly at Yeo Vale, shows her in profile and wearing a blue velvet
mantle edged with ermine.
There was also among the portraits at Yeo Vale a three-quarter length of
an agreeable-looking man, apparently between thirty and forty years of
age, shown wearing a red velvet cap and an unusual coat, like a
full-skirted cassock made of blue satin; this portrait, the work of
Hudson, was believed to represent Thomas Morrison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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