Richard Steele

Sir Richard Steele (bap.

12 March 1672 – 1 September 1729) is an Irish writer and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator.

Steele was born in Dublin, Ireland in March 1672 to Richard Steele, an attorney, and Elinor Symes (née Sheyles); his sister Katherine was born the previous year.

Steele is largely raised by his uncle and aunt, Henry Gascoigne and Lady Katherine Mildmay.

A member of the Protestant gentry, he is educated at Charterhouse School, where he first meest Addison.

After starting at Christ Church in Oxford, he goes on to Merton College, Oxford, then joins the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry in order to support King William's wars against France.

He is commissioned in 1697, and rises through the ranks to captain of the 34th Foot in two years.

He dislikes British Army life, and leaves the army in 1705, perhaps due to the death of the 34th Foot’s commanding officer, and with him, his opportunities of promotion.

It may, then, be no coincidence that Steele's first published work, The Christian Hero (1701), attempts to point out the differences between perceived and actual masculinity.

In 1706, Steele is appointed to a position in the household of Prince George of Denmark, consort of Anne of Great Britain.

He also gained the favor of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford.

In 1705, Steele marries a widow, Margaret Stretch, who dies in the following year.

At her funeral, he meets his second wife, Mary Scurlock, whom he nicknames "Prue" and marries in 1707.

In the course of their courtship and marriage, he writes over 400 letters to her.

Mary dies in 1718, at a time when she is considering separation.

Their daughter, Elizabeth (Steele's only surviving legitimate child), marries John Trevor, 3rd Baron Trevor.

Steele becomes a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1713, but is soon expelled for issuing a pamphlet in favor of the Hanoverian succession.

When George I of Great Britain comes to the throne in the following year, Steele is knighted and given responsibility for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.

While at Drury Lane, Steele writes and directed The Conscious Lovers, which is an immediate hit.

However, he falls out with Addison and with the administration over the Peerage Bill (1719), and in 1724 he retires to his wife's homeland of Wales, where he spends the remainder of his life.

A member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club, Steele remainsin Carmarthen after Mary's death, and is buried there, at St. Peter's Church.

During restoration of the church in 2000, his skull is discovered in a lead casket, having previously been accidentally disinterred during the 1870s.

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