Augustus Jessopp

Augustus Jessopp (20 December 1823 – 12 February 1914) was an English cleric and writer. He spent periods of time as a schoolmaster and then later as a clergyman in Norfolk, England. He wrote regular articles for The Nineteenth Century, variously on humorous, polemical and historical topics. He published scholarly work on local Norfolk history and on aspects of English literature. A good friend of the academic and ghost-story writer M. R. James, he is described by James' biographer R. W. Pfaff as "a fine specimen of the learned but somewhat eccentric country parson."

Early life Born in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, on 20 December 1823, he was the son of John Sympson Jessopp (c.1780–1851), barrister-at-law, and his wife Eliza Bridger Goodrich. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge (B.A. 1848 and M.A. 1851). He took orders in 1848, and in the same year he married Mary Anne Margaret Cotesworth.

Jessopp took on the curacy of Papworth, Cambridgeshire, where he resided till 1854, when he became headmaster of Helston Grammar School. Here he remained until 1859, when he succeeded Dr Vincent at Norwich School, being thus brought into relations with East Anglia, the region he came to write about. His tenure at Norwich (where George Meredith's elder son was among his pupils) was uneventful, and from the fact that he seldom, if ever, alludes to schoolmastering in his subsequent writing, it may not have been to his taste. He began work on his historic studies while at Norwich, and became rector of Scarning in Norfolk in 1879.

In 1896 he and M. R. James co-edited an edition of Thomas of Monmouth's Life of William of Norwich, containing historical essays on the background to the events, which were the origin of the antisemitic blood libel.

Academic career and recognition Jessopp became a member by incorporation at Worcester College, Oxford in 1870, and in 1895 he became an honorary Fellow of that Society. His college at Cambridge conferred the same honour on him in the same year. In 1890, Oxford appointed him a select preacher, and his handsome presence and his sonorous voice made him an imposing figure in St Mary's pulpit. In 1895, he became an honorary canon of Norwich, and he was Chaplain-in-Ordinary to King Edward VII from 1902 to 1910.

In 1907, Jessopp was granted a Civil List pension of £50, in addition to a £100 pension previously granted in recognition of his services to archæology and literature. He resigned his benefice in 1911 and went to live at The Chantry, Norwich. On his removal from Scarning he sold most of his valuable library, and the sale attracted considerable attention. It included a number of letters addressed by George Meredith to Dr and Mrs Jessopp, and a number of Meredith first editions with autograph inscriptions of the author.

Jessopp died on 12 February 1914 and was buried at Scarning on 14 February.

A biography of Jessopp has been published: Augustus Jessopp: Norfolk's Antiquary, Nick Hartley, Torre, M & M Baldwin, 2017,

Jessopp gave a talk in the Reading Room in High Street, Tittleshall in 1882 to mostly agricultural workers of the area where he compared life then (1882) to the much harsher conditions (he had discovered from a chest full of old documents) which existed in 1282, citing harsh punishments for very petty offences. The Reading Room still stands.