William Newton (poet)

William Newton (1750–1830), a labouring class poet often referred to as "the Peak Minstrel", was born near Abney, in the parish of Eyam, Derbyshire, England, on 28 November 1750.

Seward's poem is also an evocation of the wild moorland scarred by quarries and smoking lime kilns, among which he works unregarded like a second Chatterton.

Newton was soon to contribute to the industrialisation of the area himself, for he went on to become the agent of Richard Arkwright, often called "father of the industrial revolution", for his invention of the spinning frame at nearby Cressbrook Mill.

Archives at Manchester Central Library contain evidence that he sought to provide better living conditions for his apprentices than were prevalent at many other mills, and he oversaw the construction of model cottages and a village school.

Any offence resulted in a beating from him with "hazel sticks across our bare buttocks and loins till he cut the flesh and made the blood flow".

The poet turned mill-owner "appeared venerable in years, with locks white and floating in the breeze; his poetical feeling was not extinct and some latent sparks of that enthusiasm remained.

[1] Newton's friendship with Anna Seward gave him entry into a group who imitated the Della Cruscan school in writing each other complimentary verses under assumed names.

[11] In the following year, Newton published two more sonnets there of a despairing tone, occasioned by the death of a son, and it has been conjectured, the threat to his livelihood after falling out with Arkwright.

Beneath my Alder's peaceful bough, While whispers soft the Western wind, My limbs I indolently throw, And leave the world and care behind.

Representing Jesus welcoming little children, it remembers the Chantrey's apprenticeship scheme and his descendants in the Williams family, whose daughter Gwendoline died in 1993.