Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Merewether, John
MEREWETHER, JOHN (1797–1850), dean of Hereford, son of John Merewether of Blackland, Wiltshire, was born at Marshfield, Gloucestershire, in 1797. His father was a great-grandson of the John Merewether of Devizes (1655–1724) who attended Bishop Ken in his last illness, and whose daughter married William Hawkins, a grandson of Izaac Walton, and author of the ‘Short Account of Ken's Life,’ 1713. He was a distant cousin of Serjeant Henry Alworth Merewether [q. v.] John matriculated from Queen's College, Oxford, on 18 Oct. 1814, graduated B.A. in 1818, and B.D. and D.D. in 1832. He was ordained priest in 1820 by the Bishop of Salisbury, and served curacies at Gillingham, Dorset, and Hampton, Middlesex. While at Hampton he was instrumental in building a chapel of ease at Hampton Wick, and attracted the favourable notice of the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV, then residing at Bushey. He was chaplain to the Duchess of Clarence, afterwards Queen Adelaide, in 1824. In 1828 he was presented by the lord chancellor to the living of New Radnor, and in 1832, on the promotion of the Hon. Edward Grey to the bishopric, he succeeded him as dean of Hereford. On 13 Jan. 1833 William IV appointed him one of the deputy clerks of the closet, and asked Lord Melbourne to have a care for his advancement. In 1836 he was instituted to the vicarage of Madeley, Shropshire, but to his bitter disappointment was passed over again and again as vacancies occurred on the episcopal bench. In 1847 he was a strenuous opponent of the election of Renn Dickson Hampden [q. v.] to the see of Hereford. After a fruitless memorial to the queen, he announced to Lord John Russell, prime minister, in a letter of great length (22 Dec.), his intention of voting against Hampden's election in the chapter meeting, and he received in reply the laconic note: ‘Sir, I had the honour to receive your letter of the 22nd inst. in which you intimate to me your intention of violating the law.’ Merewether finally refused to affix the seal of the dean and chapter to the document recording the bishop's formal election (see his letter of justification in Times, 1 Jan. 1848; cf. Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, 1891, i. 498, and ‘The Case of Dr. Hampden,’ Official and Legal Proceedings, 1848).
Merewether, who was an enthusiastic local antiquary, was elected F.S.A. in 1836, and communicated to the ‘Archæologia’ accounts of discoveries made during the restoration of Hereford cathedral. In this work he took a leading and most valuable, because strictly conservative, part. In 1843 he issued an interesting ‘Statement on the Condition and Circumstances of the Cathedral Church of Hereford,’ with notes on the effigies and excellent illustrations of the then condition of the structure. He himself contributed 500l. to the restoration fund. He was an active member of the Archæological Institution, in connection with which he did some important work in Wiltshire, commemorated by the posthumous publication in 1851 of the ‘Diary of a Dean: being an Account of the Examination of Silbury Hill and of various Barrows and other Earthworks on the Downs of North Wilts.’ The plates illustrating human remains, flint implements, pottery, &c., are from Merewether's own drawings. Merewether died at Madeley vicarage on 4 April 1850, and was buried in the lady-chapel of Hereford Cathedral. The five lancet windows at the east end of the minster were fitted with stained glass to his memory with the inscription ‘In Memoriam Johannis Merewether, S.T.P. ecclesiæ Heref. decani, quo strenuo fautore huius sacræ ædis restitutio feliciter est inchoata.’ By his wife Mary Ann Baker, of Wiley, Wiltshire, Merewether had six sons and three daughters. Mrs. Merewether died on 17 June 1879, aged 71.
[Gent. Mag. 1850, i. 536, 562; G. V. Cox's Recollections, p. 342; Jones's Hereford Cathedral and City, 1858, p. 74; Havergal's Fasti Herefordenses, 1869, p. 41; Ann. Reg. 1850, p. 217; Guardian, 10 April 1850; Illustr. Lond. News, 1850, i. 247 (portrait).]