Gilpin (John)

of Cowper’s famous ballad, is a caricature of Mr. Beyer, an eminent linendraper at the end of Paternoster Row, where it joins Cheapside. He died 1791, at the age of 98. It was Lady Austin who told the adventure to our domestic poet, to divert him from his melancholy. The marriage adventure of Commodore Trunnion in Peregrine Pickle is very similar to the wedding-day adventure of John Gilpin.

“John Gilpin was a citizen

Of credit and renown;

A trainband captain eke was he

Of famous London town.”

Cowper: John Gilpin.

⁂ Some insist that the “trainband captain” was one Jonathan Gilpin, who died at Bath in 1770, leaving his daughter a legacy of £20,000.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.