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Rev Dr Francis Randolph 1750-1831
Vicar of Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Mezzotint portrait by Thomas Goff Lupton published in 1827, after a painting by William Bradley; original in the Smithsonian, Washington DC, USA
Francis Randolph was Vicar of Holy Trinity, Bradford on Avon from 1799 to 1804. This doesn’t mean that he lived at the Vicarage House in Bradford, because he had been a Prebendary of Bristol Cathedral since 1791 and was vicar and rector of other parishes at the same time. He was also a proprietor of and preacher at the 1000-seat Laura Chapel in Argyle Street in Bath from 1796. Having multiple livings was a way of making up a larger income for favoured members of the Anglican clergy. The absentee priest may have turned up at his parishes for special occasions and especially at the time of the payment of tithes! The day-to-day running of the parish was left to a Curate.
Randolph was born in Bristol on 29th December 1752, the son of George Randolph, a doctor who promoted the medicinal virtues of the hot water springs of Hotwells in Clifton and published a book about the water and its supposed cures in 1750. Francis was educated at Eton and went on to King’s College, Cambridge in 1772, graduating with a BA in 1777 and MA in 1780. He was awarded a DD -Doctor of Divinity- from Lambeth in 1795 and from Dublin in 1806. He spent some time in Germany, becoming English tutor to the Duchess of York in Bavaria and became embroiled in a scandal about the loss of some letters he was to convey to Germany from the Princess of Wales.
In Bristol he became known as “Belshazzar Randolph” from taking Belshazzar’s Feast as the subject of his sermon on the occasion of the coronation of King George IV, with its reference to wives and concubines.
After Bradford he was made Vicar of the rich parish of St Paul’s, Covent Garden in London in 1817 and in the same year became Vicar of Banwell in Somerset. At that time the famous bone cave at Banwell, full of bones of Ice Age animals, was being discovered and he, with George Henry Law, the geologising Bishop of Bath & Wells whose palace was in the parish, promoted it as a curiosity. Both Randolph and Law were made Fellows of the Geological Society of London.
Randolph died on 14th June 1831 at his home in Bristol and was buried at Bristol Cathedral.