Robert Stephen Hawker

HAWKER, Robert Stephen. b. Plymouth, Devon, 3 December 1804; d. Stratton, Plymouth, 15 August 1875. The grandson of Robert Hawker*, he was (according to Sabine Baring-Gould*) a mischievous and exuberant child. After some years of rebellion he was educated at Cheltenham Grammar School; then at Pembroke College (1823) and Magdalen Hall, Oxford (after getting married in 1823; Magdalen Hall had been his grandfather's college). He gained the Newdigate Prize for a poem on Pompeii in 1827, and graduated BA in 1828. As an undergraduate he also wrote a famous poem, ‘The Song of the Western Men’ (‘And shall Trelawny die?’), published in 1825. He took Holy Orders (deacon 1829, priest 1831), serving a...