was born in Gopsall Hall in Leicestershire.
His great-grandfather was one of the great Birmingham ironmasters and lived at Aston Hall. So the family were immensely wealthy and Charles lived accordingly, with a second home in Bloomsbury.
Charles Jennens
He was a man of literary pretensions, bringing out his own edition of some of Shakespeare’s tragedies, which brought him scorn and ridicule from some quarters. But he was a very able amateur librettist, providing the libretti for Messiah and Belshazzar, as well as Saul.
Both Jennens and Handel were difficult men, apt to be high-handed. Handel could fairly massacre a libretto to suit his music; but Jennens would not countenance such treatment of his work (see maggot number 3 )
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