Fovargue, Stephen (1760-1760)

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Adm. sizar at ST JOHN'S, Jan. 30, 1754. S. of Stephen, Esq., of Cambridgeshire. B. at French Drove, Isle of Ely. [Said by Cole to be of French extraction, from a colony of Walloons at Thorney.] School, Peterborough (Mr Mirehouse). ' Matric. Michs. 1754; Scholar; B.A. 1758; M.A. 1761; B.D. 1768. Fellow, 1760-72. Bursar, 1768-70. Ord. deacon (Peterb.) Sept. 23, 1759; priest (Lincoln). Sept. 23, 1760. C. of Gt Addington, Northants., Sept. 22, 1759. ‘A dissipated character and partially insane’ (Cooper). In January, 1770, he horsewhipped and kicked his gyp and groom, Thomas Goode, who declared on his deathbed that he died from the injuries. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict of manslaughter, after accusations of voluntary homicide. Surgeons who made a post-mortem were, however, of the opinion that death arose from a fever brought on by excessive drinking. Fovargue fled to Paris in 1771, ‘being apprehensive of a Cambridge Jury from his known ill character’, and ‘was forced to submit to play a common violin to strollers and reduced to the utmost misery and distress.’ Outlawed and his Fellowship declared vacant. Rather than starve he returned to Cambridge in Feb. 1774, and surrendered himself to the Vice-Chancellor, who sent him to the Mayor, by whom he was committed to the Castle, but being an outlaw he could not be tried at the Lent Assizes. He came to Cambridge ‘in long dirty ruffles, his hair tied up with a piece of packthread and in a sailor's jacket and yellow trowsers.’ Acquitted at the Assizes, July 1774. Sold his estate and left Cambridge, 1775. Author, A New Catalogue of Vulgar Errors, 1767 [see Cole's Collections for an Athenae Cantabrigienses (Brit. Museum Add. MSS. 5869)]. Coles and Cooper say that he died in London, but the Cambridge Chronicle, June 24, 1775, states that he died at Bath, and the Parish Register of St James's, Bath, corroborates that he died June 6, 1775, at Bath. (St John's Coll. Adm., III. 624; The Genealogist, N.S., IX. 110; Hist. of St John's Coll., II. 1075-7; Cooper, Annals, IV. 372; Northants. Clergy; Cambridge Chronicle, Feb. 10, 1770.)

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