He made his will on February 9, 1710. I take a few notes of it from Mr. Carruthers’s recent publication. He gives to his wife Edith the furniture of her chamber, her rings and jewels, and £20: To his son-in-law Charles Racket and his daughter Magdalen his wife, £5 each, for mourning: All else, including rent-charge out of the manor of Ruston, in Yorkshire, together with lands at Binfield, and at Winsham, in Surrey, to his son Alexander Pope, whom he makes executor. He died in 1717, and the will was proved on the 8th of November in that year.
So far I have had little to do but to repeat what has been previously told by others. But now we come to the question, Who was the Poet’s grandfather, the merchant’s father? This question, hitherto unresolved, I propose to answer.
When Thomas Warton, in the Appendix to the Life of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford, and also the founder of the family of Pope, Earls of Downe, with whom Pope claimed kindred, enters on the consideration of this question, he admits the probability that such a relationship existed, but professes his utter inability to ascend beyond the father, in pursuit of the Poet’s ancestors. The attempt to do so has been made by others, who have brought far less of antiquarianism into literary history than Warton. Mr. Carruthers can find no trace of him. And it may be stated generally, that no one has (publicly at least) made any approach to the determination of the question. Yet this was plainly the first step to be taken in any investigation of the Poet’s claim to be of “gentle blood.” Literary biography owes much to the Wartons—more than the present writers in this department seem disposed to acknowledge; and it is to a Warton, not Thomas, but his brother, Dr. Joseph Warton, that we owe the hint upon which I have proceeded, and, as I believe, settled the question for ever.
Dr. Warton, we have seen, in his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, 1780, vol. ii., informs us, that he learned from Dr. Bolton, Dean of Carlisle, that he had heard from a Mr. Potenger, a cousin of Pope, that Pope’s grandfather was a clergyman of the Church of England living in Hampshire.
This has been accepted by Mr. Roscoe, and others who have written on the life of Pope since 1780; but, though attempts have been made, no one has hitherto succeeded in establishing the truth of Mr. Potenger’s statement, by singling him out from amongst the Hampshire clergy of his time, and showing his position.
In looking over the list of beneficed clergymen in the county of Hants, in the period within which he lived, presented to us by the Book of Compositions for First Fruits, I find only one person of the name of Pope, and his name was Alexander. This of itself would be sufficient to support Mr. Potenger’s account; and to set before us the person for whom search has before been unsuccessfully made. Then as to his residence and position in the Church, we find in these books of Compositions:—
1. On the 31st of January, 1631, Alexander Pope compounded for the first fruits of the rectory of Thruxton, in the county of Hants.
2. On November 23, 1633, he compounded for the first fruits of the prebend of Middleton.
3. And on May 23, 1639, for the first fruits of the prebend of Ichen-Abbots.
As he held Thruxton till his death, he must be considered in the light of a clergyman possessed of good preferment, in fact, as belonging to the superior class of the clergy in the diocese of Winchester.