# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Headley, Henry

​HEADLEY, HENRY (1765–1788), poet and critic, baptised at Irstead, Norfolk, 27 April 1765, was only son of Henry Headley, rector of that parish to 1768, and then vicar of North Walsham to his death on 6 Oct. 1785, at the age of fifty-seven. His mother, Mary Anne Barchard, married (on 21 Sept. 1789), after her first husband's death, Anthony Taylor of Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, and died 13 Oct. 1818, in her eighty-sixth year. Headley was one of Dr. Parr's pupils at Colchester school, and went with him to Norwich. At the former school he was idle, and at Norwich Parr was at first inclined to dismiss him on that ground, but through his father's persuasion was induced to give him another trial, and the experiment ‘succeeded speedily and amply. He displayed taste, he acquired learning, he composed well.’ On 14 Jan. 1782 he was admitted a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, under the tuition of the Rev. Charles Jesse, and on the following 27 May (Trinity Monday) was elected scholar. Bowles, the poet, and William Benwell [q. v.], a man of literary taste, ​were also scholars, and became his friends. Thomas Warton was then a fellow of this college, and Headley, who was ‘poetical from top to toe,’ at once fell under Warton's influence. During his vacation visits from Oxford to his friends in Norfolk he fell in love with a beautiful woman, referred to in his poems as Myra, but their common friends thought the attachment indiscreet, and she was prevailed upon to marry a rival. The death of his father freed him from all restraint. He quitted Oxford in 1785, it is said in an agony of disappointment, and without any communication with his friends. He was then, it appears, privately married to another lady, and withdrew to Matlock. He returned to the university to take his degree of B.A., 16 May 1786, and introduced to his friends, says Beloe, ‘his wife, but such a wife! Who she was, where he found her, why he married her, are matters which, if known at all, can only be so to a very few.’ His next residence was at Norwich, where he occupied himself with the study of the old English poets, but he had been delicate from his youth, and fell a victim to consumption. He went alone to Lisbon in May 1788 in the hope of improving his health. Through a letter of recommendation from Windham he was admitted into the house of M. de Visme at Cintra, but his strength declined. In August he determined upon returning to Norwich, and after two months of much suffering died on 15 Nov. 1788, being buried at North Walsham on 20 Nov. near his parents and two sisters. An elegant inscription, composed, at the widow's request, by Benwell, for a monument to his memory, was first made public by Kett in 1790. His widow married again; according to Beloe, not without shame, and soon died.
[Gent. Mag. 1788 pt. ii. p. 1033, 1789 pt. ii. p. 953; Nichols's Illustr. of Lit. v. 210; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. viii. 157–8, ix. 28, 40; Johnstone's Parr, i. 163–4; Field's Parr, ii. 413–15; Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum, ed. Brydges (1800), pp. lxx–i; British Critic, xxxv. 481–5 (1810); Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Beloe's Sexagenarian, i. 172–9; Kett's Memoir of Headley; Palmer's Perlustration of Great Yarmouth, ii. 80, iii. 58.]
W. P. C.