Edmund Curll and His Family

Abstract

For such a conspicuous figure in literary history, Edmund Curll kept his private life remarkably quiet. Virtually nothing has come to light about his origins, and his biographers have discovered little about his family. In his entertaining book, published in 1927, Ralph Straus seems to have thought that Curll had only one wife, and was unable to put a name to her.¹ In his entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), Raymond T. MacKenzie cited Curll’s will, observing that the versified codicil added in 1742 reveals a second wife and that it ‘tells all that is known about his family, save that in the will itself his wife’s name, Elizabeth, is given.’ As for the bookseller’s only son, ‘We only know that Henry died before 1742, leaving no children’.² MacKenzie stated that Edmund ‘was born probably in the West of England, and is of unknown parentage’. In their biography Edmund Curll, Bookseller (2007), Paul Baines and Pat Rogers identified two marriages, the first to Anne Rowell in 1704 and the second to a widow named Elizabeth Bateman in 1734. They suggested that Anne died around 1725, and Henry, after a spell in the Fleet prison, around 1737.³ Most sources continue to record Edmund as born ‘c. 1675’, although Baines and Rogers gave reasons why this should be corrected to 1683. New evidence makes it possible to establish definitively the place and date of Edmund’s birth, to fill out the picture with regard to Anne, Elizabeth and Henry Curll, and to situate family events more closely within the framework of the publisher’s career.

Full text

EDMUND CURLL AND HIS FAMILY
Published in Notes and Queries, Oxford University Press, 26 September 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjac105
For such a conspicuous figure in literary history, Edmund Curll kept his private life remarkably
quiet. Virtually nothing has come to light about his origins, and his biographers have discovered
little about his family. In his entertaining book, published in 1927, Ralph Straus seems to have
thought that Curll had only one wife, and was unable to put a name to her.
1
In his entry for the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), Raymond T. MacKenzie cited Curll’s will,
observing that the versified codicil added in 1742 reveals a second wife and that it ‘tells all that
is known about his family, save that in the will itself his wife's name, Elizabeth, is given.’ As for
the bookseller’s only son, ‘We only know that Henry died before 1742, leaving no children.’
2
MacKenzie stated that Edmund ‘was born probably in the West of England, and is of unknown
parentage.’ In their biography Edmund Curll, Bookseller (2007), Paul Baines and Pat Rogers
identified two marriages, the first to Anne Rowell in 1704 and the second to a widow named
Elizabeth Bateman in 1734. They suggested that Anne died around 1725, and Henry, after a spell
in the Fleet prison, around 1737.
3
Most sources continue to record Edmund as born ‘c. 1675’,
although Baines and Rogers gave reasons why this should be corrected to 1683. New evidence
makes it possible to establish definitively the place and date of Edmund’s birth, to fill out the
picture with regard to Anne, Elizabeth and Henry Curll, and to situate family events more closely
within the framework of the publisher’s career.
The most noteworthy of the documents are those that relate directly to Edmund. The
baptismal records of the parish of St Giles in the Fields contain an entry regarding the christening
on 22 July 1683 of ‘Edmund s of Henery & Grace Curl,’ with an addendum ‘born July 14.’
4
This

2
corresponds exactly with the birthday that he reports in the codicil to his will in 1742.
5
This
discovery holds a wider significance.
6
First, it emerges that Edmund was the youngest of seven
children, of whom four were his brothers and two his sisters, the eldest being Henry Curll
(baptised in the momentous year of 1666, when the Great Fire broke out). Second, we are now
able to state categorically that the bookseller was born a Londoner, as well as a citizen and
liveryman in due course who would take on his own apprentices as a member of the Cordwainers
Company, Richard Francklin (7 May 1711)
7
and Charles Hulett, son of William Hulett of St.
Giles in the Fields (8 August 1717)
8
. Indeed, Curll’s family was settled no further from his main
haunts in the trade than St Giles’s, one of the fastest growing out-parishes, which had acquired a
dubious reputation in the seventeenth century, becoming a byword for filth and squalor. It took
its name from the patron saint of beggars and lepers, and became notorious for its population of
thieves and outcasts, hence its mention in the opening lines of The Beggar’s Opera (1728). Its
immediate neighbours included St Clement Danes, St Martin in the Fields and St Paul, Covent
Garden, within the last of which Curll’s business lay for all of his later career. He would be
buried at the last named church, less than a quarter of a mile from the scene of his baptism. We
must abandon any lingering ideas of Curll arriving in the city as an ambitious provincial.
If we turn to his first marriage, we find further confirmation that the wedding took place
on 13 August 1704.
9
The surprising new revelation is that his bride, Anne Rowell, was
apparently thirty-three (though named as twenty-five in the allegation), having been baptised at
All Saints, Kingston upon Thames on 25 October 1669. She was the daughter of Thomas Rowell,
at this date schoolmaster at Kingston, whose burial is found on 13 November 1698.
10
Two sisters
and two brothers are listed in the baptisms at All Saints. We can be reasonably sure that this is
the right Anne Rowell, for three reasons. First, her burial is recorded in the same registers on 28

3
June 1724 as ‘Anne Curll wife of Edmond fm. London’
11
The Rowells were a well established
family in Kingston, and it is understandable that Anne’s body should have been taken there to lie
with those of her relatives.
12
Second she is mentioned in the will of her paternal grandmother
Anna Rowell of the same parish in 1680, as is her father, sisters Mary and Catherine, and
brothers Thomas junior and William.
13
Third, some additional support is lent by the fact that the
younger Thomas (1670-1718) provided an important item to Curll’s publishing list from almost
its start to its end. He had first appeared as the author of a new translation of Sallust, of which a
specimen was advertised by Curll and his regular partner Egbert Sanger in 1709. The full work
never appeared, but in April of the same year the bookseller brought out The Christian’s Support
under all Afflictions: being the Divine Meditations of John Gerhard, D.D., a version of a Latin
work dating from 1606. The translator is named as Thomas Rowell, M.A. rector of Great
Cressingham, Norfolk. Further editions appeared in 1715 and 1739, the latter of which was still
being advertised when Curll’s second wife died in 1756 and the family business was finally
wound up. Thomas had matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford in 1687 aged sixteen, and held a
number of livings in Suffolk and Norfolk prior to his death in December 1718. It was possibly
through him that Curll met Anne, as he had no previous contacts with Kingston of which we are
aware.
As for Curll’s second wife Elizabeth, the widow of a builder named Joseph Bateman, we
can add the date of her burial, which took place on 9 June 1756, like her husband at St Paul’s,
Covent Garden.
14
Elizabeth appears to have kept the business going after Curll’s death: almost a
year after her own burial, on 10 May 1757 the London Evening Post announced the publication
(actually reissue) of another theological warhorse from the publisher’s list, ‘The Domestick
Temple; or Family Preacher …By Robert Warren, D.D. Printed for the late Mrs. Curll; and to be

4
had at Pope’s Head in Hide-street, Bloomsbury.’ This had last appeared in October 1747, two
months before Edmund died. The advertisement, which also lists Thomas Rowell’s translation,
The Christian’s Support under all Afflictions, concludes: ‘N.B. Any Books printed for the late
Mrs. Curll, may be had at the above Place.’
In the case of Henry, Curll’s only child, a larger amount of fresh information has come to
light. It is now possible to supply a date for his birth, marriage and death, and to consider a
previous suggestion that he was incarcerated in the Fleet prison. The evidence collected fits the
picture we have of his spasmodic career in the business, acting alongside and sometimes in place
of his father. The baptism of ‘Henry Son of Edward (sic) Corall and Ann uxor’ is listed under the
date 14 January 1707 in the registers of St. Clement Danes,
15
at which time the father was
operating from the Peacock, near St Clement’s church. When he was just twenty-one, according
to modern usage, the son entered into marriage: ‘Appeared personally Henry Curll of the parish
of St. Martin in the Field in the County of Midd[lesex] aged Twenty-Two years and a Batchelour
and alledges that he intends to marry with Mary Rodburne of the parish of Hampstead in county
of Midd[lesex] aged Twenty three years and a Spinster … he made Oath and prayd Licence to
solemnize the said Marriage in the parish Church of St. Alphage London.’ He signed a bond the
same day as Henry Curll, ‘bibliotecarius’ (presumably meaning ‘bookseller’ and not ‘librarian’).
The wedding actually took place on the following day at St Benet Paul’s Wharf, a Thames-side
church at some distance from St Alphage’s on London Wall (the reason for the change does not
appear).
16
On 1 April 1737 appears the notice of Henry’s burial in the same parish as that of his
baptismal record.
17
It is noteworthy that in 1728 the only imprint that he ever used, independent
of his father’s address, was that of ‘Clement’s Inn’, a location within the parish.
18
He had played

5
no visible part in publishing activities since 1734. His death necessitated a subsequent change in
Edmund’s will.
It has previously been noted that one Henry Curll absconded from the Fleet prison in
June 1735.
19
However, he is named as a gentleman, lately of St James’s, Westminster, neither of
which details seems to fit Edmund’s son. Since the creditor is listed as Andrew Wiseley, we can
link this to a separate file dated 3 September 1736 in the National Archives, which records the
discharge of Henry Curll and also mentions Wiseley. It therefore seems likely that the bookseller
is not the escapee in question. Another discharge in the same file two weeks later refers to Henry
Curle, presumably the same individual, under the date 18 September: this time there is the mark
or signature of Eliz. Curle added, perhaps as supplying a surety.
20
As well as confirming various aspects of Curll’s life and connections, the new findings
indicate that his provenance was closer to the scenes of his later career than has been realised.
Among other things, they show that he married first into a family of educated gentry; that his
second wife had attempted to carry on the business in some fashion after his death; and that his
son Henry did indeed marry, but would die not long after his unexplained disappearance from the
world of publishing.
ALLISON MURI
University of Saskatchewan
PAT ROGERS
University of South Florida

6
1
In addition he knew hardly anything of Curll’s son Henry, who ‘did very little indeed, and faded out before his
time’: see Ralph Straus, The Unspeakable Curll (London, 1927), 189.
2
‘Edmund Curll (d. 1747)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi-
org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/10.1093/ref:odnb/6948.
3
Paul Baines and Pat Rogers, Edmund Curll, Bookselller (Oxford, 2007), 21, 247.
4
London Metropolitan Archives [henceforth LMA]: London Church of England Parish Registers, P82/Gis/A/02.
5 National Archives [henceforth NA], PROB 11/763, cited by Baines and Rogers, Curll, 320.
6
For details of the family details here, see LMA: London Church of England Parish Registers, P82/Gis/A/01.
7
LMA COL/CHD/FR/02/0371-0376. Francklin would become a bookseller, publisher, printer, and occasional
partner to Curll.
8
National Archives Board of Stamps collection: Apprenticeship Books, Series IR 1, Class IR 1, Piece 5.
9
LMA: London Church of England Parish Registers, P69/Mtn3/A/001/Ms06837.
10
Surrey History Centre, Woking, Surrey: Surrey Church of England Parish Registers, P33/1/11.
11
Surrey History Centre, Woking, Surrey: Surrey Church of England Parish Registers, P33/1/12.
12
For the Rowell family records, see Family History Library, Film Numbers 97138, 991683.
13
NA: Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Series PROB 11; Class PROB 11; Piece 363.
14
Westminster, Anglican Parish Registers, City of Westminster Archives, STP/PR/4/4.
15
City of Westminster Archives Centre: Church of England Parish Registers, STC/PR/5/6.
16
LMA, Marriage Bonds and Allegations; The Registers of St. Benet and St. Peter, Paul's Wharf, London, 1607-
1837, xxxix, 359.
17
City of Westminster Archives Centre: Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, STC/PR/7/7.
18
Straus, Curll, 135, states that he ‘had a fancy that Henry started a separate business’ in Henrietta Street, Covent
Garden, in 1726, but we have not been able to confirm this.
19
NA, Prison 10/88, under the date 18 June 1735, cited by Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture (London
1972), 304.

7
20
Miscellanea. Records of the King’s Bench, Fleet, and Marshalsea prisons, Series PRIS 10, The National Archives,
Kew, Entry Books for Discharges (1734–1740). The will of Henry Curl of Middlesex, gentleman, was proved on 19
September 1739, and shows that he had a widow named Elizabeth (NA PROB 11/698/151).