William Harness

Life

Born near Wickham in Hampshire on 14 March 1790, he was son of John Harness, M.D., commissioner of transports, and elder brother Henry Drury Harness. In 1796 he went to Lisbon with his father, and in 1802 entered Harrow School. There he knew Lord Byron, with whom he had a physical disability of the leg in common. He went on to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1812, M.A. 1816.

Some letters from Byron to Harness survive from two short periods between February and June 1808, and then in December 1811. All Byron's letters seek to re-establish a recalled Harrow friendship and latterly became increasingly intimate in tone. Harness spent part of Christmas 1811 with Byron and another friend, Francis Hodgson, at Newstead Abbey but the friendship cooled so much immediately after, that there is no correspondence at all. The following month, Byron declared to his friend John Cam Hobhouse that 'Hodgson was with me...& a Mr Harness of Harrow a mighty friend of mine, but I am sick of Harrow things'. Either Harness fended off a Byron advance, or the poet tired of the rather priggish youth.

Harness took holy orders, and was ordained curate of Kilmeston, Hampshire, in 1812. He was curate of Dorking 1814-16, and then preacher at Trinity Chapel, Conduit Street, London, and minister and evening lecturer at St. Anne's, Soho. At Hampstead he was curate from 1823 to 1826, and then, owing to his popularity as a preacher, became incumbent of Regent Square Chapel, St. Pancras, London, from 1826 to 1844. On the opposite side of Regent Square, Edward Irving's chapel was situated, and in 1831 Harness preached a pointed sermon entitled Modern Claims to Miraculous Gifts of the Spirit. On visiting Stratford-on-Avon, and finding the inscription on Shakespeare's monument in a poor state, he had it restored.

In 1841 Lord Lansdowne appointed Harness clerical registrar of the privy council. From 1844 to 1847 he was minister of Brompton Chapel, London. During this period, at the suggestion of Henry Milman, he undertook to build the church of All Saints, Knightsbridge, raising money and contributing himself. The church was opened in 1849, and he became the perpetual curate for the rest of his life.

On 1 March 1851 Harness acted as one of the stewards at the farewell dinner given to William Charles Macready In 1866 he was appointed Rugmere prebendary in St Paul's Cathedral, and preached there.

While on a visit to one of his former curates, Edward Neville Crake, dean of Battle, Harness died in a fall down the stone staircase of the deanery, on 11 November 1869. He was buried at Bath, Somerset. A brass tablet was erected to his memory in All Saints' Church, Knightsbridge, and a prize with his name was founded by the subscriptions of his friends at Cambridge for the study of Shakespearean literature. His close friends included Sarah Siddons, Fanny Kemble, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Miss Mitford, Catherine Fanshawe, Joanna Baillie, Harriet Martineau, and Thomas Hope. The Rev. A. G. L'Estrange wrote The Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness (1871).

Works

Harness's writings, besides sermons, were:

Harness wrote charades for his friends; three of these were inserted by Miss Mitford in Blackwood's Magazine in 1826; there in 1827 he contributed a tale entitled Reverses, which had a success. His writings in the Quarterly Review were considered to carry weight. In 1844, as "Presbyter Catholicus", he wrote a pamphlet Visiting Societies and Lay Readers. A Letter to the Lord Bishop of London, against Bishop Charles Blomfield's proposal for a metropolitan visiting and relief association.