Stokes, Henry Sewell

(1808-1895)

   "The Laureate for Cornwall" was born at Gibraltar, where his father was a government official. He was educated in England in a school of a young Baptist minister called William Giles at Chatham, where Charles Dickens was his companion. He became a solicitor and eventually settled at Truro, Cornwall, where, in 1883, he started the Cornish Guardian and Western Chronicle and for three years was its editor. In 1856 he was elected mayor of Truro and in 1859 was appointed its town clerk; he was clerk of the peace for Cornwall from 1865 until his death in Bodmin. His poetry publications: The Lay of the Desert, 1830. The Song of Albion: A Poem on the Reform Crisis, 1831. Discourses on Opinion, 1831. The Vale of Lanherne, 1853. Echoes of War, 1855. Scattered Leaves, 1862. Rhymes from Cornwall, 1871 (reissued in 1884 as Voyage of Arundel and Other Rhymes from Cornwall). Memories, 1879. Poems of Later Years, 1873 (reissued in 1881 as The Chantry Owl and Other Verses). Restormel: A Legend of Piers Gaveston, 1875. The Gate of Heaven: The Plaint of Morwenstow, 1876.

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997.