Philip Hunt (priest)
He was the son of Thomas Hunt of Newcastle-on-Tyne where he was brought up, was born in Herefordshire, and was educated at Newcastle Grammar School under Hugh Moises.
[1][3][5] Through a friend, John Brand who was rector of Maulden, Hunt became chaplain to Lord Elgin, who was Ambassador of Great Britain to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1802.
[9] Joseph Dacre Carlyle, also on Elgin's staff, had been asked to search for manuscripts, particularly those related to the New Testament, and Hunt assisted him in a thorough investigation of monasteries in the Constantinople area and on the Prince Islands.
[16] There was, however, a division of authority in Athens, with the vaivode having civilian control, while the Disdar, a military man, was in charge of the Acropolis, then a fort of the Turkish forces.
[20] With its enlarged scope, Hunt applied bribery, to acquire antiquities for export to Elgin's collection through agents.
[21] One significant factor in favour of Hunt's renewed approach was the death of the Disdar, whose son was anxious to succeed to his position, and fabricated a story about previous damage to a metope.
[25] St Clair comments that the diplomatic situation, with the British wishing to discourage local powers in Greece from involvement with the French, was the actual reason Hunt returned to Athens in July; and that he would not have been the first choice from Elgin's staff.
[26] In his absence, work proceeded in Athens on the Marbles, led briefly by Thomas Lacy of the Royal Engineers, and then by Lusieri.
[28] Both Hunt and Lusieri had been working on the assumption that the marbles were destined for restoration in Italy: but William Richard Hamilton argued against that, on security grounds.
[29] In November 1801 Hunt returned to Athens for diplomatic reasons on HMS La Victorieuse, to keep one step ahead of Sébastiani, French agent in Constantinople.
[43] Among other testimony was that of John Morritt, who in the 1790s had succeeded in bribing the Disdar to allow him to remove marbles, but had been dissuaded from acting, by Louis-François-Sébastien Fauvel.
[52] Hunt reported on possible development of the prison in 1816, for a committee including the sessions chairman William Wilshere.
[55] In 1821 Charles Callis Western, visiting Bedford, gained the impression that Hunt was, as the only active local magistrate, the major figure in the town's public life.
His view that "very few labourers married voluntarily"[60] was cited in the Political Register of William Cobbett, and Francis Place wrote to him with approval.
[63] Robert Harry Inglis, a Tory for whom Hunt had no time at all, was sessions chairman from 1825 to 1832, and opposed expenditure on the prison.
[68] At this period Hunt introduced a stiffer regime in the prison, possibly affected by local disorder, arson and recidivism.
[77] Hunt wrote two reports for the government based on his intelligence work in the Morea in 1801, the first being more confident about the local forces and their potential to resist invasion than the second.
[78] A letter composed by Hunt in 1805, during his detention in France, was the basis of Elgin's Memorandum (1810, anonymous) on the marbles, at least as far as their description was concerned.
