Chauncy Hare Townshend

Chauncy Hare Townshend, born Chauncy Hare Townsend (10 April 1798, Godalming, Surrey – 25 February 1868), was a 19th-century English poet, clergyman, mesmerist, collector, and hypochondriac. He is mostly remembered for bequeathing his collections to the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) and the Wisbech & Fenland Museum in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. He added an 'h' to his surname in 1835, upon inheriting; his first name was often spelled "Chauncey".

Townshend was the only son of Henry Hare Townsend, whose maternal grandfather was Henry Hare, 3rd Baron Coleraine, and whose father (and thus Chauncy's grandfather) was James Townsend M.P., Lord Mayor of London from 1772 – 1773. They were a wealthy family, with lands in Norfolk, London and Switzerland, and the young Chauncy was educated at Eton College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He graduated with B.A. in 1821 and M.A. in 1824, and won the Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1817 for his poem 'Jerusalem.' He also played one game of first-class cricket for Kent in 1827.

Townshend met the poet Robert Southey in 1815, and through him met the Wordsworths and Coleridges. Two volumes of poetry were published in 1820, and he also had a famous encounter with the poet John Clare:

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