Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Madan, Spencer (1758-1836)
MADAN, SPENCER (1758–1836), translator of Grotius, born in 1758, was the eldest son of Spencer Madan [q. v.], bishop of Peterborough, by his first wife, Lady Charlotte, second daughter of Charles, earl Cornwallis. He became a king's scholar at Westminster School in 1771, and was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1776. He obtained Sir William Browne's medal for Latin epigram in 1778, and on 11 Dec. of the same year was created M.A. In 1782 his poem ‘The Call of the Gentiles’ (Cambridge, 1782, 4to) gained the Seatonian prize. He undertook, ‘as a preparatory exercise for holy orders,’ a translation of Grotius's ‘De Veritate,’ &c., which was published in 1782 as ‘Hugo Grotius on the Truth of Christianity, translated into English’ (8vo). Other editions followed in 1792 and 1814.
Madan was curate of Wrotham, Kent (1782–3), and in 1783 became rector of Bradley Magna, Suffolk. He afterwards (1786) was presented by his uncle, the Bishop of Lichfield, to the prebend and vicarage of Tachbrook, Warwickshire, but soon exchanged the prebend for the rectory of Ibstock, Leicestershire, which he held till his death. In 1787 he was given the rectory of St. Philip's, Birmingham, and resigned the Tachbrook vicarage. He succeeded his father in 1788 as chaplain in ordinary to the king. In 1790 he became canon residentiary of Lichfield, in 1794 chancellor of the diocese of Peterborough, and in 1800 prebendary of that cathedral. While at Birmingham he promoted a subscription for the erection there of ‘a free church … for the use of the lower classes,’ and himself contributed 500l.
Madan had a controversy in 1790 with Priestley, who published ‘Familiar Letters addressed to the Inhabitants of Birmingham,’ in answer to Madan's sermon on ‘The Principal Claims of the Dissenters considered.’ Madan replied with ‘A Letter to Dr. Priestley’ [1790], 8vo. In 1809 he proceeded D.D. at Cambridge, and on resigning St. Philip's in the same year through ill-health was presented to the living of Thorpe Constantine, Staffordshire, which he held till 1824. In October 1833 he was attacked with paralysis, from which he only partially recovered. He died on 9 Oct. 1836 at Ibstock, aged 78, and was buried in a family vault at Thorpe. His children erected a tablet in Lichfield Cathedral to his memory. Madan was a kindly and courteous man. Anna Seward described him when a young man as ‘unaffected, graceful, interesting’ (Gent. Mag. 1857, pt. i. p. 206). Madan married in 1791 Henrietta, daughter of William Inge of Thorpe Constantine, and had eleven children.
[Gent. Mag. 1837, pt. i. pp. 205–7; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Welch's Alumni Westmonast. p. 406.]