his property to his two boys, subject to these annuities; his executors were John Churchill, his brother, and Humphrey Cotes; and his papers were left to Wilkes. He died 4 Nov. 1764, Wilkes having some trouble in preventing a disturbance of his last moments by officious priests. His property was sold by auction and fetched extravagant prices. Robert Lloyd heard the news when sitting down to dinner. He sent away his plate, saying, 'I shall follow Churchill,' and took to bed, from which he never rose. Davies says that Lloyd died of dissipation. Probably the causes were various. Churchill's sister, Patty, who was betrothed to Lloyd, died soon afterwards. It is said that Wilkes destroyed a partly finished satire among Churchill's papers, directed against Colman and Thornton. An apology for such a satire against two old friends may be suggested by the charge made against them, that they had neglected Lloyd in his distress.
Churchill's body was brought to Dover and buried in the old churchyard of St. Martin. It is marked by a slab and the line taken from the 'Candidate'—
Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies.
A monument is also erected to him in the church. Byron visited the grave when leaving England for the last time, and has recorded his impression in lines dated Diodati, 1816.
Wilkes made many professions of a desire to do honour to his friend's memory. He did nothing beyond scribbling some worthless notes to his poems (printed in his volume of correspondence of 1769, also, with omissions, by Almon, and in 'New Foundling Hospital for Wit,' 1786, iii. 89-107), giving some scanty information to Kippis for the 'Biographia,' and erecting a monument, with a Latin inscription ('Carolo Churchill, amico jucundo, poetæ acri, civi optime de patria merito, P. Johannes Wilkes, 1765'), on an urn presented to him by Winckelmann, and upon a pillar in the grounds of his cottage at Sandown in the Isle of Wight. Their intimacy, as may be too certainly inferred from the correspondence now in the British Museum, was in some respects little creditable to the morality of either.
Churchill's mother survived till 1770. His brother John was a physician, who attended Wilkes, and published some editions of his brother's works. Another brother, William, was rector of Orton-on-the-Hill, and died in 1804. Churchill left two sons, Charles and John, who were educated by Sir Richard Jebb. John married imprudently, and died in France, leaving a widow and daughter, for whose support an appeal was made in 1813. Charles became an itinerant lecturer, and got into trouble. Begging letters addressed by him to Wilkes at intervals down to 1786 are in the Add. MSS. 30871-3, 30875.
A portrait of Churchill, by Schaak, is engraved as a frontispiece to his works in various editions. Another is mentioned by Mr. Forster as presented to Lord Northampton's Hospital at Greenwich in 1837 by Mr. Tatham, the warden.
Johnson told Boswell (1 July 1763) that he had always thought Churchill 'a blockhead,' and thought so still. Churchill, however, had shown more fertility than was to be expected, and a tree which produced many crabs was better than a tree which only produced a few. Cowper gives a fine criticism of his old schoolfellow in 'Table Talk,' and speaks of him enthusiastically, calling him 'the great Churchill' in a letter to Unwin in 1781 (Southey, Cowper, vi. 9-11).
His works are:
- 'The Rosciad,' March 1761 (9th edition in 1765).
- 'The Apology; addressed to the Critical Reviewers,' April 1761.
- 'Night; an Epistle to Robert Lloyd,' January 1762.
- 'The Ghost,' first two books March 1762, third September 1762, fourth November 1763.
- 'The Prophecy of Famine; a Scots Pastoral, inscribed to John Wilkes, Esq.,' Januarv 1763.
- 'An Epistle to W. Hogarth,' July 1763.
- 'The Conference,' November 1763.
- 'The Duellist,' in three books, November 1763.
- 'The Author,' December 1763.
- 'Gotham,' three books, bks. i. and ii. February 1764, bk. iii. September 1764.
- 'The Candidate,' June 1764.
- 'The Times,' September 1764.
- 'Independence,' September 1764.
- 'The Farewell,' 1764.
- 'The Journey' (in posthumous collections).
- Sermons, with dedication to Warburton, 1766.
It is suggested that the sermons were probably found in his father's desk. A collective edition of Churchill's poems appeared in a handsome quarto volume in 1763. The poems published in 1764 form a second volume. A 'third' edition, in two volumes, 8vo (printed for John Churchill, executor), inducing all the poems, appeared in 1766, and a 'fifth' edition, in four volumes, the last including the sermons and dedication to Warburton, in 1774. Churchill's poems are included in Anderson's, Chalmers's, and other collections.
