John Bacon Sawrey Morritt
John Bacon Sawrey Morritt (1772? – 1843) was an English traveller, politician and classical scholar. Early life Born about 1772, he was son and heir of John Sawrey Morritt, who died at Rokeby Park in Yorkshire on 3 August 1791, by his wife Anne (died 1809), daughter of Henry Peirse of Bedale., M.P. for Northallerton. Both parents were buried in a vault in Rokeby Church, where their son erected to their memory a monument with a poetic inscription. Morritt had been in Paris during 1789, and was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted later that year. He graduated B.A. 1794 and M.A. 1798. He inherited a large fortune, including the estate of Rokeby, which his father had purchased from Sir Thomas Robinson, 1st Baronet in 1769. On tour Early in 1794, Morritt set off east, and spent two years in travelling, mainly in Greece and Asia Minor. One consequence of his journeying was the wide adoption in English of the term Balkan Mountains by English speakers, in place of the classical name Haemus Mons. The use of Balkan peninsula for south-east Europe came a little later, with August Zeune (1808). Morritt travelled from Vienna to Istanbul, where the embarrassed Robert Liston found the British embassy was in no state to lodge him. On a quest for Troy, he arrived, with James Dallaway and other Englishmen, from Lesbos on 6 November 1794, landing about twenty miles below Cape Lectum, in the Sinus Adramyttenus. There he made a survey of the supposed scene of the Iliad. In politics A conservative in politics, Morritt was returned to parliament by the borough of Beverley at a by-election in 1799. There he had the support of Lord Yarborough and Sir Christopher Sykes. He was defeated at the dissolution in 1802. In 1806, Morritt served as high sheriff of Yorkshire, and in 1807 he made a speech at the nomination of William Wilberforce for Yorkshire. In 1814 he was elected on a by vacancy for the constituency of Northallerton, which he represented until 1818, and he sat for Shaftesbury in Dorset from 1818 to 1820. Associations Morritt paid Sir Walter Scott a visit in the summer of 1808, and was again his guest in 1816 and January 1829. Their friendship was never broken. Scott, on his return from London in 1809, spent a fortnight at Rokeby, which he admired. In December 1811 he told Morritt his intention of making it the scene of a poem, and received in reply a letter on its history. Scott's second stay in autumn 1812 resulted in Rokeby, praised for its local descriptions. It was dedicated to Morritt, who was entrusted with the secret of the authorship of the Waverley novels. Scott's visits were renewed in 1815, 1826, 1828, and in September 1831 on his last journey to London and Italy. Letters which passed between them are included in John Gibson Lockhart's Life of Scott; others are in Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott (1894). Morritt, on