John Hobart Caunter (21 June 1792 – 14 November 1851) was an English cleric and writer. Serving briefly in India as a cadet, he entered the Church and served as the Incumbent Minister of Portland Chapel in Marylebone, London, for 19 years. His writings primarily focused on Biblical subjects and on India, his best-known work being a collection of tales, The Romance of History. India (1836).
Life
John Hobart was born at the rectory of Dittisham, a village in South Devon where his maternal grandfather John Hutchings was the rector. Hobart's family were Devonshire gentry; he was the second son of George Caunter of Staverton and Harriett Georgina, née Hutchings, of Dittisham. His middle (and primary) name came from his godfather, Lord Hobart. Hobart's father went to the East when his son was one year old and became acting superintendent of Prince of Wales Island – today Penang, Malaysia. His wife soon joined him and died there in childbirth in 1798, while Hobart stayed in England. His uncle Robert Sparke Hutchings, who became deacon at Dittisham in 1803 and rector in 1805, was his guardian; Hobart later described him as having "a heart perfection scarce could mend" and as being the source of "most of what I know".
Caunter was educated at the Royal College, Jersey. He was then sent to the East India Company Military Seminary which in 1809 had opened in Addiscombe, Surrey, and went to India as a cadet to the 34th Foot. On his way there he took up a short residence at British-controlled Madeira in 1810. He probably arrived in India in the latter part of 1811, his commission as ensign being dated 25 October of that year. He resigned from the Bombay establishment of the East India Company on 21 January 1814 and sailed back to England, stopping in Mauritius, where his brother George Henry Caunter was a government official.
While a minor he wrote poems that were collected in The Cadet, published in London in 1814; in the preface he cautions that the title poem paints India "in no very flattering colours". He goes on to state in the third person that he left England "chiefly induced by the dear idea of meeting a father, whom, since the earliest period of infancy, he had but once seen : — shortly after his arrival he heard of his death : — he discovered, much to his disappointment, nothing on the Continent of Asia to interest him". Almost his only pleasure, he says, was in reading. The title poem contrasts his disillusionment with India with his recollection of England, "that lov'd Isle where Freedom's children dwell", and of his childhood, which is sketched in idyllic terms. His disappointment as reported in The Cadet did not stop him, however, from writing extensively about India later.
Matriculating at Peterhouse College, Cambridge in 1817, Caunter obtained the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1828. He was ordained a deacon in York in 1824 and a priest in London in 1827, becoming Perpetual Curate of Portland Chapel, at different times also called St Paul's Chapel, in Foley Place, Marylebone (1825–44). He was, according to the entry on him in Alumni Cantabrigienses, "[w]ell-known in London as the fashionable preacher of his day." From 1844 to 1846 he was Rector of Hailsham, Sussex. In 1845 a young woman, Elizabeth Taylor, brought an action against Caunter, alleging that he had promised to marry her within a certain time and had failed to do so. She claimed £3,000 in damages. Caunter had previously paid for her education for some years. The counsel for the defendant stated the action had arisen from a "serious misunderstanding" between the parties. On the arrangement that the case be kept out of the papers, a verdict was taken by consent for £750 plus £177 in costs. Newspaper reports appeared regardless.
From 1846 to 1848 Caunter had a lease on the proprietary chapel, St. James Episcopal, at Kennington. In this period he suffered from ill health, causing him to give up the Kennington chapel. From 1848 he served as Curate at Prittlewell, Essex. In 1850 he was arrested and appeared before the Court for Relief of Insolvent Debtors in Lincoln's-Inn. He explained that he had paid most of the damages he had been required to pay Elizabeth Taylor. However, in 1846 he had resigned his well-paid Hailsham curacy as a result of a pledge, and his income had since suffered due to the publicity about the case. He declared that his writings did not bring him any income as they were not on popular subjects, and he and his wife (whom he had married in 1845) had no fortune. Caunter arranged with the opposing creditor and was discharged.
