Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cripps, John Marten
CRIPPS, JOHN MARTEN (d. 1853), traveller and antiquary, son of John Cripps, was entered as a fellow-commoner at Jesus College, Cambridge, on 27 April 1798, and came under the care of Edward Daniel Clarke. After some stay at Cambridge, he set out on a tour with his tutor, which, though originally intended for only a few months, was continued for three years and a half. In the first part of their journey to Norway and Sweden, they were accompanied by the Rev. William Otter (afterwards bishop of Chichester) and Malthus, the well-known political economist, both members of Jesus. The result of these wanderings was embodied by Clarke in six quarto volumes—his famous ‘Travels’—in which the services of his pupil, ‘the cause and companion of my travels,’ are adequately acknowledged. Cripps brought back large collections of statues, antiques, and oriental flora, some valuable portions of which he presented from time to time to the university of Cambridge and to other public institutions. In 1803 he was created M.A. per literas regias, and subsequently became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, his name appearing for the first time on the list for 1805. By will dated 1 Oct. 1797 he inherited the property of his maternal uncle, John Marten, which included possessions in the parish of Chiltington, with the manor of Stantons, Sussex. Having built Novington Lodge on the Stantons estate, Cripps fixed his residence there, and devoted much of his time to practical horticulture. His investigations were the means of bringing into notice several varieties of apples and other fruits. From Russia he introduced the kohl-rabi, a useful dairy vegetable. He died at Novington on 3 Jan. 1853, in his seventy-third year. By his marriage on 1 Jan. 1806, to Charlotte, third daughter of Sir William Beaumaris Rush of Wimbledon, he left issue.
[Jesus College Admission Book; Gent. Mag. lxxvi. i. 87, new ser. xxxix. 202–3; Lower's Worthies of Sussex, pp. 271–3; Athenæum, 15 Jan. 1853, p. 82; Horsfield's Sussex, i. 236; Horsfield's Lewes, ii. 246–7; Burke's Landed Gentry, 6th edit. 1882, i. 391; Otter's Life and Remains of E. D. Clarke.]