John Bicknell solicitor to the Admiralty and the Prince Regent, became father-in-law to John Constable. His eldest daughter Maria Elizabeth Bicknell married Constable in 1816. John Bicknell John Bicknell, the elder (baptised 1746 – 1787) was an English barrister and writer. He was co-author with Thomas Day of the abolitionist poem "The Dying Negro" from 1773. Bicknell has also been credited with "Musical Travels through England", a pseudonymous satire on Charles Burney. The second son of Robert Bicknell of the Inner Temple, he was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1761. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1769.
John Bicknell attribution is accepted also by modern scholarship. It was supported soon after Bicknell's death, by William Seward, who knew Bicknell and introduced James Boswell to him, in 1786. It was endorsed by Francis Douce and John Thomas Smith. Seward also identified a number of short satirical pieces in newspapers, that had been attributed to George Steevens, to Bicknell. Bicknell on 16 April 1784 married, at St Philip's Church, Birmingham, Sabrina Sidney, the girl he had selected with Thomas Day at Shrewsbury about 15 years earlier. She had spent some time living with Bicknell's mother. After Day dropped his plan to