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Augustus Jessopp (20 December 1823 – 12 February 1914) was an English cleric and writer. He spent periods of time as a schoolmaster and then later as a clergyman in Norfolk, England. He wrote regular articles for The Nineteenth Century, variously on humorous, polemical and historical topics. He published scholarly work on local Norfolk history and on aspects of English literature. A good friend of the academic and ghost-story writer M. R. James, he is described by James' biographer R. W. Pfaff as "a fine specimen of the learned but somewhat eccentric country parson."
Jessopp took on the curacy of Papworth Everard, Cambridgeshire, where he resided till 1854, when he became headmaster of Helston Grammar School. Here he remained until 1859, when he succeeded Dr Vincent at Norwich School, being thus brought into relations with East Anglia, the region he came to write about. His tenure at Norwich (where George Meredith's elder son was among his pupils) was uneventful, and from the fact that he seldom, if ever, alludes to schoolmastering in his subsequent writing, it may not have been to his taste. He began work on his historic studies while at Norwich, and became rector of Scarning in Norfolk in 1879. During this period, he was awarded a Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity (1870), from Worcester College, Oxford.
His entire picture was unreal, giving the worst rather than the average conditions. He certainly did his best to brighten village life; he was quite free from clerical bigotry, and candidly admits that the stuffy little Ranter's chapel is too often the only place where the religious emotions of the rural poor can be stirred and the yearnings of the soul satisfied. Unfortunately his well-meant efforts came to little largely because he went too late to parish work. His best years had been spent as a schoolmaster.
Jessopp was essentially a man of the study, and the "monsters of life's waste" he attacked were too often those he imagined must be the bane of his poorer neighbours—rather than those that really oppressed them. Again, he was not Norfolk born. He never comprehended the inner nature of the hard-grained East Anglians that rates stranger and foe as nearly equivalent. For those reasons, he came to cross purposes with his people. He lost his temper sometimes and wrote about his neighbours in terms some of them resented. Numbers of The Nineteenth Century travelled down to Scarning; and when local celebrities recognised their portraits, dancing with stage antics to amuse the rector's town friends, and understood he was getting paid handsomely for the show, the feud waxed bitter.
In 1884, Jessopp theoretically came close to eternal damnation of his soul when he ran foul of the Muggletonians, who claimed to possess this power through issuing curses. His article entitled "The Prophet of Walnut Tree Yard" appeared in the August issue of The Nineteenth Century. Lodowicke Muggleton had been born in Walnut Tree Yard, Bishopsgate, in 1609. Jessopp's article was written with robust humour, probably because the writer assumed the sect extinct or moribund. The mid-century Chambers' Encyclopaedia would have told him just that. Jessopp felt obliged to apologise, which he did on 20 September 1887. However, it could have been much worse. Until the middle of the century, Muggletonians condemned those who ridiculed them. Sir Walter Scott suffered just this fate.William Lamont, "Last Witnesses: The Muggletonian History, 1652–1979" Aldershot:Ashgate Publishing (2006), p. 198
In 1896 he and M. R. James co-edited an edition of Thomas of Monmouth's Life of William of Norwich, containing historical essays on the background to the events, which were the origin of the antisemitic blood libel.
In 1907, Jessopp was granted a Civil List pension of £50, in addition to a £100 pension previously granted in recognition of his services to archæology and literature. He resigned his benefice in 1911 and went to live at The Chantry, Norwich. On his removal from Scarning he sold most of his valuable library, and the sale attracted considerable attention. It included a number of letters addressed by George Meredith to Dr and Mrs Jessopp, and a number of Meredith first editions with autograph inscriptions of the author.
Jessopp died on 12 February 1914 and was buried at Scarning on 14 February.
A biography of Jessopp has been published: Augustus Jessopp: Norfolk's Antiquary, Nick Hartley, Torre, M & M Baldwin, 2017,
Jessopp gave a talk in the Reading Room in High Street, Tittleshall in 1882 to mostly agricultural workers of the area where he compared life then (1882) to the much harsher conditions (he had discovered from a chest full of old documents) which existed in 1282, citing harsh punishments for very petty offences. The Reading Room still stands.
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