Soame Jenyns (1 January 1704 – 18 December 1787) was an English writer and Member of Parliament. He was an early advocate of the ethical consideration of animals.

Life and work

He was the eldest son of Sir

Roger Jenyns Sir Roger Jenyns (1663–22 September 1740), of Bottisham, Cambridgeshire was an English knight and landowner. He was the son of Roger Jenyns of Hayes, Middlesex (1636-1693) and his wife Sarah Latch (d 1703), daughter of Joseph Latch. He marri ...

and his second wife Elizabeth Soame, the daughter of Sir Peter Soame. He was born in London, and was educated at

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...

. In 1742 he was chosen M.P. for

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...

, in which his property (

Bottisham Hall Bottisham Hall is a country house in Bottisham, Cambridgeshire, England. Built in 1797 for the Reverend George Leonard Jenyns to replace the family's previous home on the same estate,"Bottisham: Manors and other estates", ''A History of the Count ...

, which he inherited from his father in 1740) was situated, and he afterwards sat for the borough of

Dunwich Dunwich is a village and civil parish in Suffolk, England. It is in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB around north-east of London, south of Southwold and north of Leiston, on the North Sea coast. In the Anglo-Saxon period, Dunwich was t ...

and the town of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

. From 1755 to 1780 he was one of the commissioners of the

Board of Trade The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for International Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...

. He was elected as a Bailiff to the board of the

Bedford Level Corporation The Bedford Level Corporation (or alternatively the Corporation of the Bedford Level) was founded in England in 1663 to manage the draining of the Fens of East Central England. It formalised the legal status of the Company of Adventurers previously ...

for 1748–1769 and 1771–1787. For the measure of literary repute which he enjoyed during his life Jenyns was indebted as much to his wealth and social standing as to his accomplishments and talents, though both were considerable. His poetical works, the ''Art of Dancing'' (1727) and ''Miscellanies'' (1770), contain many passages graceful and lively though occasionally verging on licence. The first of his prose works was his ''Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil'' (1756). This essay was severely criticized on its appearance, especially by

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

in the ''

Literary Magazine A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry, and essays, along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letter ...

''. Johnson condemned the book as a slight and shallow attempt to solve one of the most difficult of moral problems. Jenyns, a gentle and amiable man in the main, was extremely irritated by his review. He put forth a second edition of his work, prefaced by a vindication, and tried to take vengeance on Johnson after his death by a sarcastic epitaph: In 1776 Jenyns published his ''View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion''. Though at one period of his life he had affected a kind of

deistic Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin ''deus'', meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation of t ...

scepticism, he had now returned to orthodoxy, and there seems no reason to doubt his sincerity, questioned at the time, in defending Christianity on the ground of its total agreement with the principles of human reason. The work was praised for its literary merits. Jenyns published ''Disquisitions on Several Subjects'' in 1782. In "Disquisition II", Jenyns argued, using the

great chain of being The great chain of being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain begins with God and descends through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals. The great c ...

, that animals should be viewed in the same way that humans would want to be viewed by God. He also asserted that: "We are unable to give life, and therefore ought not wantonly to take it away from the meanest insect, without sufficient reason; they all receive it from the same benevolent hand as ourselves, and have therefore an equal right to enjoy it."

Marriages

St Andrew's church - east window (detail) - geograph

He married twice, but left no progeny: *Firstly to Mary Soame, only daughter of Col.

Edmund Soame Edmund Soame (c. 1669 – 8 September 1706) was an English soldier and politician. He served in the English Army where he attained the rank of colonel, and was member of Parliament for Thetford from 1701 to 1705. Death Soame died on board a ship ...

(d. 1706) of Dereham, Norfolk, a

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

for Thetford in Norfolk from 1701 to 1705, who fought for King William III. His life-size alabaster statue survives in West Dereham Church. *Secondly he married Elizabeth Grey, daughter of Henry Grey of Hackney, Middlesex.

Death and succession

Jenyns died in London of a fever, on 18 December 1787 and was buried at the church of the Holy Trinity, Bottisham. As he died without progeny, his heir was his cousin

George Leonard Jenyns George Leonard Jenyns (19 June 1763 – 1848) was an English priest, a landowner involved both in the Bedford Level Corporation and in the Board of Agriculture. Life He was the son of John Harvey Jenyns of Eye, Suffolk, and was born at Roydon, ...

Works

A collected edition of the works of Jenyns appeared in 1790, with a biography by

Charles Nalson Cole Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was " ...

. There are several references to him in

James Boswell James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 (New Style, N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the Englis ...

's ''Johnson''.

Commentary on Jenyns

Carl L. Becker Carl Lotus Becker (September 7, 1873 – April 10, 1945) was an American historian of the Age of Enlightenment in America and Europe. Life He was born in Waterloo, Iowa. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 1893 as an undergraduate, an ...

describes Jenyns' take on the American Revolution in ''The Eve of the Revolution'' (1918) as follows: Jenyns has been cited as an example of an Anglican

utilitarian In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charac ...

References

Attribution *

External links

Soame Jenyns
at th
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jenyns, Soame 1704 births 1787 deaths 18th-century English male writers 18th-century English non-fiction writers 18th-century English poets 18th-century essayists Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge British male essayists British MPs 1741–1747 British MPs 1747–1754 British MPs 1754–1761 British MPs 1761–1768 British MPs 1768–1774 British MPs 1774–1780 English animal rights scholars English essayists English male non-fiction writers English male poets Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies People from Bottisham Utilitarians Writers from London