Henry Beeching

Bowyer Nichols, J. W. Mackail, and H. C. Beeching, by Frederick Hollyer, c. 1882.

Henry Charles Beeching (15 May 1859 – 25 February 1919)^[1] was an English clergyman, author and poet.^[2]

Biography

He was educated at the City of London School^[3] and at Balliol College, Oxford.^[4] He took holy orders in 1882, and began work in a Liverpool parish,^[5] at Mossley Hill. He was Rector of Yattendon from 1885 to 1900; Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1900; Professor. of Pastoral Theology at King's College London from 1900 to 1903; Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn from 1900 to 1903;^[6]Canon of Westminster from 1902 until 1911^[7] and Dean of Norwich from 1911^[8] until his death. He wrote a book on Francis Atterbury.^[9]

To him is attributed the popular epigram on Benjamin Jowett:

First come I; my name is Jowett.

There's no knowledge but I know it.

I am master of this college:

What I don't know isn't knowledge.

This is the first verse of The Masque of B-ll—l^[10] (1880), a scurrilous undergraduate production in 40 verses satirising Balliol figures. It was suppressed at the time; later research has given Beeching credit for 19 of those.

Bibliography

• Love in Idleness: A Volume of Poems (1883) with J. W. Mackail and J. B. B. Nichols
• Love's Looking Glass (1892) with J. W. Mackail and J. B. B. Nichols
• A Paradise of English Poetry, an anthology compiled by Beeching including works by A. W. - Joseph Addison - Sir Francis Bacon - Richard Barnfield - Francis Beaumont - Thomas Lovell Beddoes - William Blake - Nicholas Breton - Emily Jane Brontë - Fulk Greville - William Browne - Robert Burton - George Gordon, Lord Byron - Thomas Campbell - Thomas Campion - Thomas Carew - George Chapman - Thomas Chatterton - Geoffrey Chaucer - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - William Collins - Henry Constable - Richard Corbet - Abraham Cowley - William Cowper - Richard Crashaw - Samuel Daniel - Sir William D'Avenant - Sir John Davies - Walter Davison - Thomas Dekker - John Donne - Michael Drayton - William Drummond - John Dryden - Ebenezer Elliott - Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex - Sir Richard Fanshawe - John Fletcher - Oliver Goldsmith - Thomas Gray - Robert Greene - Frances Greville - William Habington - Edward Herbert, Lord Herbert of Cherbury - George Herbert - Robert Herrick - Thomas Heywood - Thomas Hood - Samuel Johnson - Ebenezer Jones - Benjamin Jonson - John Keats - Henry King - Charles Lamb - Mary Lamb - Walter Savage Landor - Richard Lovelace - John Lylye - James Mabbe - Christopher Marlowe - Andrew Marvell - Jasper Mayne - John Milton - James Graham, Marquis of Montrose - Thomas Moore - Sir Thomas More - Thomas Nash - Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford - George Peele - Mary, Countess of Pembroke - Ambrose Philips - Katherine Philips - Alexander Pope - Matthew Prior - Sir Walter Ralegh - Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset - Sir Walter Scott - Sir Charles Sedley - William Shakespeare - Percy Bysshe Shelley - James Shirley - Sir Philip Sidney - John Skelton - Robert Southwell - Edmund Spenser - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey - James Thomson - Henry Vaughan - Edmund Waller - John Webster - George Wither - Charles Wolfe - William Wordsworth - Sir Henry Wotton - Sir Thomas Wyatt - Edward Young
• Pages from a Private Diary (1898) — published anonymously.

Notes

1. F. P. Sprent, ‘Beeching, Henry Charles (1859–1919)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 18 Jan 2016
2. The Spectator
3. ‘BEECHING, Very Rev. Henry Charles’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2016; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 ; online edn, April 2014 accessed 18 Jan 2016
4. 'UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE' Daily News (London, England), Tuesday, June 29, 1880; Issue 10670
5. Chisholm 1911.
6. Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1908: London Horace Cox, 1908
7. Ecclesiastical Intelligence The Times (London, England), Saturday, Oct 25, 1902; pg. 9; Issue 36908
8. New Dean Of Norwich The Times (London, England), Friday, Sep 22, 1911; pg. 4; Issue 39697
9. Sprent 2004.
10. The Masque of B-ll--l online

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Beeching, Henry Charles". Encyclopædia Britannica. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Sprent, F. P.; Matthew, H. C. G. "Beeching, Henry Charles (1859–1919)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30671. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

External links

• Works by Henry Beeching at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Henry Beeching at Internet Archive
• Works by Henry Beeching at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)