Thomas Newcomb

Thomas Newcomb (1682?–1765) was an English clergyman and teacher, known as a poet. He was pro-government (i.e. Whig) writer of the ascendance of Robert Walpole, associated to Walpole through the interest of his patron Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle.

He was born about 1682. He matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford 15 April 1698, aged 16, when he was described as son of William Newcomb of Westbury, Shropshire. He graduated B.A. on 30 March 1704.

Newcomb became chaplain to Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, and rector of Stopham, near Pulborough in Sussex, in 1705. By 1706 he was also rector of the neighbouring parish of Barlavington, and he appears to have held that living until his death.

Newcomb taught in Hackney parish, where John André was among his pupils. On 8 May 1764 he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, stating that the his salary for supplying the chapel at Hackney had been taken from him, while his living in Sussex was very small. He asked the duke to contribute to a collection which friends were raising for him, and he enclosed a Latin character of John Wilkes, and verses on him.

Newcomb died at Hackney in 1765, and was buried there on 11 June. In the following year his library was sold. A mezzotint engraving of Newcomb by J. Faber, after Hawkins, was prefixed to his Last Judgment (1723).

In 1712 Newcomb published an anonymous satire Bibliotheca, a Poem occasioned by the sight of a modern Library. It is friendly to Richard Steele, and hostile to Daniel Defoe. The poem's form is related to a Battle of the Books; unusually for the period Newcomb included some female writers. The image of the goddess Oblivion may have influenced "Dulness" in Alexander Pope's Dunciad; the resemblance was pointed out by John Nichols. Roger Lund has argued that the debt may be considerably greater; as Newcomb himself complained.

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