John Wood Warter

John Wood Warter (21 January 1806–21 February 1878) was an English cleric and antiquarian. He is known now as an editor of the works of Robert Southey, his friend.

Life He was born on 21 January 1806, the eldest son of Henry de Grey Warter (1770–1853) of Cruck Meole, Shropshire, and his wife Emma Sarah Moore (died 1863), daughter of William Wood of Marche Hall and Hanwood, Shropshire; the naturalist John Clavering Wood was his uncle. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, under Samuel Butler. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 14 October 1824, and graduated B.A. in 1827, M.A. 1834, B.D. 1841.

From 1830 to 1833 Warter was chaplain to the English embassy at Copenhagen.

Warter became an honorary member of the Scandinavian and Icelandic Literary societies. He travelled in Norway and Sweden, knew scholars including Rasmus Rask, and used the royal library of Denmark, becoming familiar with Nordic and German literature of all sorts. In 1834, just before his marriage, he was appointed by the archbishop of Canterbury to the vicarage of West Tarring and Durrington, Sussex, a peculiar of the archbishopric, with the chapelries of Heene and Patching. He remained the vicar of West Tarring for the rest of his life. For some years to 31 December 1851 he was the rural dean. He was an old-fashioned churchman of the high and dry school, constantly at odds with the ecclesiastical commissioners. was in the Quarterly Review, March 1856, perhaps provoked by his statement that he could draw up "a most remarkable history" of the periodical. They were married at Keswick on 15 January 1834.

The physician John Southey Warter (1840–1866) was their second son; he was one of those who attempted to rationalise the taking of a case history. He wrote Observation in Medicine (1865). His elder brother, Henry de Grey Warter (1837–1889), was a Royal Horse Artillery officer. He married in 1880 Anna Louisa Walton, and the couple had a daughter Ellen Anneth and a son Henry de Grey Warter (1885–1917) of the Royal Flying Corps, killed in action. The stage manager Richard Barker (1834–1903), birth name also Henry de Grey Warter, was a nephew of John Wood Warter, son of his younger brother Henry de Grey Warter JP (1807–1884).

Warter died on 21 February 1878, and was buried with his wife in West Tarring churchyard.