2 Feb. 1841 Caunt was disqualified for a foul blow. At a match with the same opponent at Long Marston, near Stratford-on-Avon, on 11 May, Ward gave in after the thirty-fifth round. Some time previously a subscription had been raised to purchase a ‘champion's belt.’ Caunt in September 1841 went to the United States, taking with him the belt. No fighting, however, took place in America. He exhibited himself in theatres, and returned to England on 10 March 1842. He brought back with him Charles Freeman, an American giant, 6 feet 10½ inches high, weighing 18 stone, and with him made a sparring tour throughout the United Kingdom. Freeman died of consumption in the Winchester hospital on 18 Oct. 1845, aged 28, when his weight had fallen to 10 stone. In 1843 Caunt became proprietor of the Coach and Horses public-house, St. Martin's Lane, London. He went into training in 1845, and, having reduced himself from 17 stone to 14 stone, met Bendigo near Sutfield Green, Oxfordshire, on 9 Sept. 1845, and, in the presence of upwards of ten thousand persons, contested for 200l. and the championship. The fight lasted over two hours, and in the ninety-third round the referee, George Osbaldiston, gave a decision (of doubtful correctness) in favour of Bendigo. On 15 Jan. 1851 a fire took place in the Coach and Horses, when two of the landlord's children were burnt to death. Great sympathy was felt with Caunt under this dreadful calamity, and a ballad upon it had a very extensive sale. On his last appearance in the ring he met Nathaniel Langham (the only man who ever beat the famous Tom Sayers) on 23 Sept. 1857, when, after an unsatisfactory fight of sixty rounds, the men shook hands and no decision was given. Caunt still kept the Coach and Horses, where the parlour was a general resort for aspirants for pugilistic honours and their patrons. He was also well known as a pigeon-shooter, and it was while taking part in a match early in 1860 that he caught cold, and died on 10 Sept. 1861. He was in his forty-seventh year. He was buried in Hucknall-Torkard churchyard on 14 Sept. From first to last he showed no improvement in his style of fighting; his positions were inartistic, and he lacked judgment, but was a manly upright boxer, and there never was a question of his pluck.
[Miles's Pugilistica, with portrait (1880), iii. 47–93; Fights for the Championship, by the Editor of Bell's Life (1860), pp. 135–42, 158–209; Fistiana (1868), pp. 21, 134; Modern Boxing, by Pendragon, i.e. Henry Sampson (1879), pp. 2–9.]
CAUNTER, JOHN HOBART (1794–1851), miscellaneous writer, born at Dittisham, Devonshire, 21 July 1794, went to India as a cadet about 1809. He was soon disgusted with oriental life, and ‘having discovered, much to his disappointment, nothing on the continent of Asia to interest him,’ he returned home. He recorded his impressions of India in a poem entitled the ‘Cadet’ (2 vols. 1814). Caunter then studied at Cambridge for the ministry of the church of England. In 1828 he obtained the degree of B.D. ‘After he had entered holy orders he was for nineteen years the incumbent minister of St. Paul's Chapel, Foley Place, in the parish of Marylebone. In 1846 he took a lease of a proprietary chapel at Kennington. He held for a short time the rectory of Hailsham in Sussex, and was also chaplain to the late Earl of Thanet’ (Gent. Mag.) At the time of his death, which took place in London, 14 Nov. 1851, he was curate of Prittlewell, Essex. His wife and three young children survived him. Caunter's best known work is his ‘Romance of History,’ India, 3 vols. 1836 (republished in 1872), which formed part of a popular series. Under the form of stories it treats of the most remarkable incidents of the Mahommedan conquests in India. Caunter also wrote: ‘The Island Bride, in six cantos,’ 1830; ‘Sermons,’ 3 vols. 1832; ‘Familiar Lectures to Children,’ 1835; ‘St. Leon, a Drama, in three acts,’ 1835; ‘Posthumous Records of a London Clergyman,’ 1835; ‘Descriptions to Westall and Martin's Illustrations of the Bible,’ 1835; ‘The Fellow Commoner; a Novel,’ 3 vols. 1836; ‘The Poetry of the Pentateuch,’ 2 vols. 1839; ‘The Triumph of Evil; a Poem,’ 1845; ‘Illustrations of the Five Books of Moses,’ 2 vols. 1847; ‘An Inquiry into the History and Character of Rahab,’ 1850. Besides various sermons, theological notes, &c., Caunter was engaged in the production of ten ‘Oriental Annuals’ between 1830 and 1840.
[Gentleman's Mag. for 1852, xxxvii. 627–8; Times, 20 Nov. 1851; Graduati Cantabrigienses, p. 96 (Cambridge, 1884); Notes and Queries for 1870, 4th ser. vi. 274, 353, 445; Add. MSS. 24867, f. 41, Brit. Mus. Cat.]
CAUSTON, MICHAEL de. [See Cawston.]
CAUSTON, THOMAS (d. 1569), musical composer, was a gentleman of the chapel royal under Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. Nothing is known of his parentage,
