Life

Fenton was born at St. David's, Pembrokeshire

Pembrokeshire

Pembrokeshire is a county in the south west of Wales. It borders Carmarthenshire to the east and Ceredigion to the north east. The county town is Haverfordwest where Pembrokeshire County Council is headquartered....

, received his education in the cathedral school there, and at an early age obtained a situation in London in the custom house. Later he entered the Middle Temple

Middle Temple

The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...

, and studied for the legal profession.

He became acquainted with literary and dramatic celebrities: Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, and Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...

, and of David Garrick

David Garrick

David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...

, to whom many of his poems were addressed. After being called to the bar he attended the circuits in Wales for several years. The latter part of his life he devoted to literary pursuits. He was an intimate friend of William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles was an English poet and critic.-Life and career:He was born at King's Sutton, Northamptonshire, where his father was vicar. At the age of fourteen he entered Winchester College, the headmaster at the time being Dr Joseph Warton...

 and of Sir Richard Colt Hoare

Richard Colt Hoare

Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 2nd Baronet FRS was an English antiquarian, archaeologist, artist, and traveller of the 18th and 19th centuries, the first major figure in the detailed study of the history of his home county, Wiltshire.-Career:Hoare was descended from Sir Richard Hoare, Lord Mayor of...

, whom he frequently visited at Stourhead

Stourhead

Stourhead is a 2,650 acre estate at the source of the River Stour near Mere, Wiltshire, England. The estate includes a Palladian mansion, the village of Stourton, gardens, farmland, and woodland...

.

He died at Glynamel, near Fishguard

Fishguard

Fishguard is a coastal town in Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales, with a population of 3,300 . The community of Fishguard and Goodwick had a population of 5043 at the 2001 census....

, Pembrokeshire, in November 1821, and was buried at Manorowen.

Works

His works are:

• ‘Poems,’ Lond. 1773; 2 vols. 1790.
• ‘A Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire,’ Lond. 1811, with thirty plates and a map. This was the work censured by Dr. Thomas Burgess, in his Bishops and benefactors of St. David's vindicated from the misrepresentations of a recent publication, 1812. Fenton's reply to the bishop remained in manuscript. Prefixed is the author's portrait, engraved by T. Woolnorth, from a painting by Samuel Woodforde
  Samuel Woodforde
  Samuel Woodforde was an 18th-century British painter.Woodforde was born at Castle Cary, Somerset. He was the second son of Heighes Woodforde, an accountant of Ansford and Anne. He was a lineal descendant of the painter Samuel Woodford, and nephew of the diarist, James Woodforde...
  
  ; the original is at Stourhead.
• ‘A Tour in quest of Genealogy through several parts of Wales, Somersetshire, and Wiltshire in a series of letters … interspersed with a description of Stourhead and Stonehenge … and curious fragments from a manuscript collection, ascribed to Shakespeare. By a Barrister,’ Lond. 1811.
• ‘Memoirs of an old Wig,’ London, 1815, (anon.), a humorous work.
• A translation of the ‘Deipnosophistæ’ of Athenæus; manuscript deposited in the library of Sir R. C. Hoare at Stourhead.
• "Cromlech at Llanwnda, Pembrokeshire" in Archaeologia Cambrensis
  Archaeologia Cambrensis
  Archaeologia Cambrensis is an archaeological and historical scholarly journal, published annually in Wales by the Cambrian Archaeological Association, containing excavation reports, book reviews, and historical essays...
  
  , No XII - October 1848 at p283

He also left comedies in manuscript, and manuscript materials for the history of every county in Wales.

Family

He married the daughter of David Pillet, a Swiss military officer, the friend of the second Duke of Marlborough. By her he had a family who survived him.