Hughes, Hugh (1755–1830), Church of England clergyman

Hugh the son of Owen Hughes of Erw’r Iâr and his wife Mary was baptised at Amlwch in Anglesey on 18 May 1755 (parish register), though Alumni Oxonienses records his father as being from Llandegfan, some 17 miles to the south. Hughes's entry in He matriculated from Jesus College, Oxford, on 7 May 1761, aged 16, and obtained the degrees of BA in 1765, MA in 1767, and BD in 1775. (This is the implication of the entry in Alumni Oxonienses. David Paterson identifies this Hugh Hughes as the son of Edward Hughes, born at Llangollen in 1755, who was admitted to Jesus College, Oxford, in 1776.)

On 4 June 1779 Hughes was appointed curate of Nuneaton, a position he held for the rest of his life, and he was the headmaster of the grammar school in the same place from 1800 (Midland Counties Tribune, 7 Apr. 1933). He was afterwards instituted rector of Hardwycke on 5 September 1805 and vicar of Wolvey on 23 May 1816.

On 1 January 1784 he married Sarah Warden (1752-1830) at Nuneaton. Their children included Thomas Smart (baptised December 1784, died 8 April 1785), a second Thomas Smart (b. 1786), Jane Smart (b. 1790), who married J. H. Monk, and Edward (b. 1792), who became a clergyman.

The Rev. Hugh Hughes, of the School House, was buried at St Nicolas’s, Nuneaton, on 9 August 1830, and a memorial tablet was erected to him in the Leeke Chapel. He is believed to be the original of the character of Mr Crewe, the curate, in ‘Janet’s Repentance’, one of George Eliot’s Scenes of Clerical Life.

Alumni Oxonienses
Parish registers
Clergy of the Church of England database
David Paterson, 'George Eliot as Historian: The Case of Mr Crewe and Hugh Hughes', George Eliot Review, vol. 41 (2010), pp. 75-83