Sir Richard Steele

Name: Sir Richard Steele Born: 1672 Died: 1st September 1729 aged 57 Associated towns Associated attractions Associated links

About Sir Richard Steele

He was born in Dublin in March 1672, the son of an attorney. His parents died when he was young and he was brought up by an uncle, Henry Gascoigne, secretary to the first Duke of Ormonde. Ormonde sent him to Charterhouse, where he first met Addison, and in 1690 he went up to Oxford. In 1694 he suddenly enlisted in the Horse Guards. In 1695 he published a poem on the funeral of Queen Mary, dedicated to Lord Cutts, who made him his secretary and an ensign in the Coldstream Guards. By 1705 he was a Captain in Lord Lucas's Regiment of Foot, he then engaged in researches for the 'Philosopher's Stone' he married in the same year a widow, Margaret Stretch who had estates in Barbadoes. In 1706 he was made gentleman-in-waiting to Queen Anne's Consort, Prince George of Denmark, and in May 1707 he was appointed to the post of Gazetteer, with £300 a year. His 1st wife having died in May 1707, he married again in September Miss Mary Scurlock. On the 12th April 1709 appeared the first issue of the tri-weekly Tatler, this continued until January 1711. In 1710 Steele became Commissioner for Stamps. The Tatler was succeeded in March 1711 by the more famous Spectator, which ceased in December 1712, and was followed in March 1713 by the Guardian. Steele entered Parliament for Stockbridge, and the Guardian was dropped for the more professedly political the Englishman. In 1714 Steele was expelled from the House for seditious utterances in The Crisis. With the death of Queen Anne, his party again came into power and he was re-elected to parliament and knighted. He was made a patentee of the Drury Lane Theatre, where in 1722 he produced The Conscious Lovers, his best comedy. He died 1st September 1729 at Carmarthen.

Information submitted by Alan Longbottom

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