Beaver Henry Blacker

“ Hampton was a prelate of much gravity and learning, and was also a very liberal benefactor to his see, having built a palace at Drogheda (then the principal place of residence of the archbishops) for himself and his successors, and having restored at considerable expense the cathedral church of St. Patrick, Armagh, which had been reduced to ruins by Shane O'Neill. He recast the great bell, and repaired the old episcopal residence at Armagh, to which he added new buildings, and annexed three hundred acres for mensal lands (Visitation Book in Archbishop Marsh's library, Dublin, p. 69) . ”

“ FITZWILLIAM, RICHARD, seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Meryon (1745–1816) , founder of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, eldest son of Richard, sixth viscount, and Catharine, eldest daughter and coheiress of Sir Matthew Decker, bart., of Richmond, Surrey, was descended from a member of the English family of Fitzwilliam, who, attending Prince John to Ireland on his appointment to the office of chief governor, founded the branch which flourished in that kingdom till the early part of the present century. ”

“ HEWITT, JAMES, Viscount Lifford (1709–1789) , lord chancellor of Ireland, born in Coventry in 1709, was son of William Hewitt, a mercer and draper, who was in 1744 mayor of Coventry. With the view of becoming an attorney he served his time with James Birch of the same place, receiver-general for the county of Warwick, but soon after resolved to join the bar, entered the Middle Temple in 1737, and was called in November 1742. Before long he secured a considerable share of business. He stood for Coventry unsuccessfully in 1754, but was returned for the borough at the general election in 1761. ”

“ HOLYMAN, JOHN, D.D. (1495–1558) , bishop of Bristol, was a native of Coddington, near Haddenham in Buckinghamshire. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and in 1512 became a fellow of New College. He graduated B.C.L. 1514, M.A. 1518, and B.D. 1526. He left his college about 1526, and became rector of Colerne, but for the sake of books and literary society settled in Exeter College, Oxford. Where he remained until he became a monk in St. Mary’s Abbey, Reading. There he soon acquired a great reputation for learning and sanctity. ”

“ The House of Lords on hearing of this ordered that Fitton should be fined 500l and committed to the king's bench prison until he should produce Granger, and find sureties for good behaviour during life. Having lost his money in the fruitless prosecution of his case, Fitton remained in gaol until taken out by James II to be made chancellor of Ireland, when he was knighted. ”

“ Little is known of Fitton's qualifications for his office beyond his long experience of litigation. The absence of any complaints from the bar or bench is so far in his favour. Archbishop King has asserted that Fitton 'could not understand the merit of a cause of any difficulty, and therefore never failed to give sentence according to his inclination, having no other rule to lead him' (State of the Protestants of Ireland under King James, 1691, p. 59) . ”

“ Accompanying the Duke of Bedford to Ireland on his appointment to the office of lord-lieutenant, he was soon after promoted, in November 1757, to the bishopric of Kilmore; and having held that see for fourteen years, he was translated to the archbishopric of Dublin, by patent dated 5 March 1772. In 1777 he incurred the vituperative attacks of Dr. Patrick Duigenan, who, in his 'Lachrymae Academicae,' took occasion to censure him severely because he had, as visitor of Trinity College, Dublin, spoken rather favourably of Provost Hutchinson, against whom that publication was specially directed. ”

“ While Dowdall was absent from Ireland the archbishopric of Armagh was conferred, in February 1553, on Hugh Goodacre, who died three months later. Towards the close of the same year Dowdall was recalled by Queen Mary, and on 12 March following he was restored to the position of primate, which had been transferred from him to Archbishop Browne. He also received a grant in commendam, for his life, of the precincts of the dissolved monastery of Ardee, of which he had been prior before his promotion to Armagh. ”

“ In 1781 he succeeded his uncle, Henry Frederick Howe, third baron Chedworth, in his title and estates, but he continued to live in comparative seclusion, and seldom visited his large landed properties in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. Late in life he lived in the house of a surgeon named Penrice at Yarmouth, and devoted himself to a study of Shakespeare. He died unmarried on 29 Oct. 1804, and the barony became extinct. He was buried, as he had directed, beside his mother in St. Matthew's churchyard, Ipswich, on the fifth day after his death. ”

“ Having entered Trinity College, Dublin, on 10 June 1799, under the tutorship of the Rev. Bartholomew Lloyd, he graduated B.A. 1804 and M.A. 1821. He married, first, Sophia, daughter of George Kiernan of Dublin, by whom he had issue; and secondly, Frances, daughter of Rear-admiral Sir Chichester Fortescue, Ulster king-of-arms, who survived him. In 1809 he was presented to the rectory of Killermogh in the diocese of Ossory, which benefice he held as long as he lived. ”

“ In 1828 Sumner, as bishop of Winchester, gave him the rectory of Wonston, Hampshire. He showed zeal and tact as a parish priest. In 1828 he was appointed rural dean of a large district, and for many years he acted as chaplain to Bishop Sumner in the dioceses of Llandaff and Winchester. The Archbishop of Canterbury conferred on him his M.A. degree.
In 1840 Dallas visited Ireland for the first time, in 1843 he founded the Society for Irish Church Missions, and was its honorary secretary for twenty-one years in Dublin, Connemara, and elsewhere. ”

“ He represented to the king the idleness of the younger brothers of the nobility, and the indolence of the common people ‘on account of the great plenty of all kinds of provisions.’ At his suggestion vagrancy was strictly forbidden, and workhouses were everywhere erected for the employment of able-bodied vagabonds, beadles being appointed by him ‘to look after the several cities, towns, and parishes, to keep beggars out, and to take up strangers’ (Council Books, temp. Henry VII) . ”

“ From 1841 to 1847 he was curate of Glanworth, from 1847 to 1849 of Glanmire, and from 1849 to 1863 of Youghal, his native parish. He was collated in 1863 to the rectory of Ardnageehy, and in 1867 to that of Doneraile, where he remained until 1872, when, under the new arrangements of the church of Ireland, he was elected to the rectory of Carrigaline, with the chapelry of Douglas annexed. ”

“ This step Ormonde had advised, and the archbishop consequently pronounced his excommunication. As a leading member of the Roman catholic party in Ireland, Fleming was involved in most of the political and religious controversies of his time, and in common with many of his co-religionists suffered considerable annoyance and persecution. In the midst of his troubles he died in 1666, and was succeeded in 1669 by Peter Talbot, the administration of the diocese being entrusted in the meantime to James Dempsey, vicar apostolic and capitulary of Kildare. ”

“ He married, in 1766, Mildred, eldest daughter of William Dealtry of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, and coheiress of her brother, William Dealtry of Ashby in the same county, and had an only son, Robert, who was promoted to the bishopric of Ossory in 1813, and two daughters, Mary, countess of Kilkenny, and Frances, who married the Hon. and Rev. Richard Bourke (subsequently bishop of Waterford and Lismore) , and was mother of Robert, fifth earl of Mayo. Fowler died suddenly at Bassingbourne Hall, near Dunmow, Essex, where he had resided two years for his health, on 10 Oct. ”

“ Soon after 1608 Hicks purchased the manor of Campden, where he erected a noble mansion near the church; the façade, as Rudder has stated, cost him 29,000l., and in the lantern on the top he ordered lights to be set up in dark nights for the benefit of travellers. This house was burned down by the royalists in the civil war; some ruins only remain. Hicks built at his own cost a sessions-house for the Middlesex magistrates in St. John's Street, Clerkenwell, on a site granted to the magistrates by James I in 1610. The house, which was known as Hicks's Hall, was opened 13 Jan. ”

“ In 1759 he was appointed Erasmus Smith's professor of natural philosophy in the university of Dublin; he was also elected about the same time a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. ”

“ They show a greater degree of legal learning and acquaintance with the authority of decided cases than the bar of Ireland at the time had credit for, and are the best monuments which we possess of the profession in the last century. ”

“ HIPPISLEY, Sir JOHN COXE (1748–1825) , political writer, born in 1748, was the only surviving son of William Hippisley of Yatton, Somerset (great-great-grandson of John Hippisley of the same place, who was recorder of Bristol in the reign of Edward VI) , by Anne, eldest daughter of Robert Webb of Cromhall, Gloucestershire. He matriculated at Hertford College, Oxford, 3 Feb. ”

“ HAMILTON, WILLIAM (d. 1729) , archdeacon of Armagh, was brother of Andrew Hamilton, D.D., who held the archdeaconry of Raphoe from 1690 to 1764. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, and graduated B.A. 1691, MA. 1696, and LL.B. 1700. Three of his sons, James, Henry, and Andrew, were educated at the same university. ”

“ In 1521 he was appointed to the archbishopric of Dublin. In 1527 he was made lord chancellor of Ireland, and held the office until his death, being 'accounted a person of great probity and justice' (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 732) . He strongly sympathised with Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth earl of Kildare [q. v.] , and his party, and protested in a letter written to Wolsey Jointly with Chief-justice Bermingham, against Kildare's imprisonment in 1528, and against the accusation of treason brought against him. ”

“ He held the great seal for twenty-two years, longer than any of his predecessors from the time of Edward I. Having amassed a considerable fortune, the emoluments of the office in his time being estimated at 12,000l. per annum, he intended to resign on a pension, but died in Dublin, on 28 April 1789, of a severe cold caught at the House of Lords. ”

“ In August 1689 he was sent by the governor and officers of Enniskillen as their agent to King William and Queen Mary, with a certificate stating that Hamilton had been a member of their association from its inauguration on 9 Dec. 1688; that he had raised a troop of horse and a company of foot; that a force under the Duke of Berwick had burnt his houses in ten villages, and carried off over a thousand cows, two hundred horses, and two thousand sheep from him and his tenants ”

“ In April 1554, along with William Walsh, bishop-elect of Meath, and others, he was commissioned to deprive the married bishops and clergy. On 29 June, accordingly, they deprived Edward Staples, bishop of Meath, and soon after the archbishop, George Browne, Bishop Lancaster of Kildare, and Bishop Travers of Leighlin. ”

“ Elrington took a very active and prominent part in the formation and management of the Church Education Society for Ireland, founded to provide funds to support the parochial schools connected with the church on the withdrawal of the parliamentary grant. ”

“ Hamilton was author of several learned treatises, including: 1. ‘De Sectionibus Conicis Tractatus Geometricus,’ London, 1758. 2. ‘Philosophical Essays on Vapours,’ &c., London, 1767. 3. ‘An Essay on the Existence and Attributes of the Supreme Being,’ Dublin 1784. 4. ‘Four Introductory Lectures on Natural Philosophy.’ His principal works were collected and republished, with a memoir and portrait, by his eldest son, Alexander Hamilton, in two 8vo vols., London, 1809. ”

“ He was an efficient and liberal bishop, and distinguished himself by firmness in the Bristol riots of 1831. When one of the minor canons suggested a postponement of divine service, as the rioters were masters of the city, Gray replied that it was his duty to be at his post. ”

“ In 1823 he removed to Ireland as domestic chaplain to the learned Dr. Laurence, shortly before promoted to the archbishopric of Cashel, who was also an Oxford man, and father-in-law of Cotton. In June 1824 the archdeaconry of Cashel was conferred upon him ”