Robert Harrison

“ The language of Camden is very outspoken. 'The woful end of this gentleman, who was drawn in by the cunning of the priest and cast by his evidence, was generally imputed to Leicester's malice. Certain it is that he had incurred Leicester's heavy displeasure; and not without cause, for he had rashly opposed him in all he could, reproaching him as an adulterer, and defaming him as a new upstart.' Much interest is attached to the question of relationship between this Edward Arden and Mary Arden of Wilmcote, the mother of Shakespeare, and second cousin of Edward Arden's father. ”

“ FLUDYER, Sir SAMUEL (1705–1768) , lord mayor of London, born in 1705, was the son of Samuel Fludyer, a clothier in the city of London. His mother was Elizabeth Monsallier, and her sister Judith was grandmother of the eminent legist, Sir Samuel Romilly. ‘The Fludyers (i.e. Samuel and his brother Thomas) began their career in very narrow circumstances, but by extraordinary industry, activity, enterprise, and good fortune they acquired inordinate wealth’ (Romilly, Memoirs) . Romilly would have become a clerk in their counting-house had not their deaths put an end to the scheme. ”

“ After the subjection of Ireland in the time of Henry II, Michael de Berneval, who served under Strongbow, obtained large grants of land at Beerhaven, county Cork, of which the O'Sullivans had been dispossessed. Here the Bernevals flourished in great prosperity until the reign of John, when the Irish rose against them, and destroyed every member of the family but one, who happened to be in London learning the law. ”

“ BRAITHWAITE, JOHN, the elder (d. 1818) , engineer, is best known as the constructor of one of the earliest successful forms of diving-bell. In 1783 he descended in one of his own construction into the wreck of the Royal George, which had gone down off Spithead in the August of the previous year, and recovered her sheet anchor and many of her guns. ”

“ He was a great lover of books, and for many years he was a most useful member of the committee of the London Library. Suffering from a painful internal disorder, he passed the last few years of his life in retirement at Leamington, where he died on 16 April 1884. He was buried at Kenilworth. Bishop Ullathorne, in an address delivered on the occasion, pronounced a well-merited eulogy on Estcourt's 'assiduity, accuracy, punctuality, skill, and sound judgment.' His knowledge of the earlier history of the midland district was remarkable, as was also the knowledge he had acquired of property law. ”

“ In 1636 Bancroft assisted at the reception of Charles I at Oxford, and gave a grand entertainment in his new palace. When Oxford became the fortified residence of Charles I during the civil war, Colonel William Legg, the governor of Oxford, fearing the palace might be used as a garrison for the parliamentary forces, had it burned down, though with as much reason and more piety, observes Dr. Heylin (Life of Laud, p. 190) , he might have garrisoned it for the king, and preserved the house. The ruins remained untouched till Bishop Fell rebuilt the palace and chapel at his own cost in 1679. ”

“ Brett always expressed himself confident as to the ultimate union of England and America by means of electricity, but he did not live to see it accomplished. He died on 3 Dec. 1863 at the age of 58, and was buried in the family vault in the churchyard of Westbury-on-Trim, near Bristol. Brett published a work of 104 pages, 'On the Origin and Progress of the Oceanic Telegraph, with a few brief facts and opinions of the press' (London, 8vo, 1858) , and contributed several papers on the same subject to the Institute of Civil Engineers, of which he was a member. ”

“ Those who in the days of his public readings in England and America heard Dickens represent the immortal Sam Weller as a loutish drawling humorist, were unable to recognise the brisk, saucy, ready cockney ostler sketched so cleverly by Phiz.
The association of Browne and Dickens continued throughout the publication of many novels. 'Martin Chuzzlewit' and 'David Copperfield' contain perhaps the etcher's most vigorous work. Occasionally differences of opinion would arise between 'author and artist. ”

“ As she progressed, the beauty of growing plants, especially of wild flowers, engaged her attention. Delightful groups of viollets, cowslips, wood anemones, and primroses would vie with snowdrops, crocuses and the most beautiful roses, in her annual supply to the society's exhibitions. She painted primroses in three panels, 'Infancy, maturity, Decay'. ”

“ He seldom worked in oil. He made drawings of the fancy ball scenes and other festivities at Buckingham Palace for the ‘Illustrated London News.’ But his strength lay in landscape, with luxurious foliage and figures well introduced. ”

“ A series of observations upon screw propulsion, made in the course of experimental voyages in the Archimedes, convinced him of the practicability of applying the system to large steamships. In 1841 Brunel was commissioned by the admiralty to conduct experiments which led to the adoption of the screw propeller in the navy in 1845. The Great Britain, an iron ship of dimensions far exceeding those of any vessel of the period, first designed by him for paddles, was the first large vessel in which the screw propeller was used. ”

“ The Barons Trimleston, like the Viscounts Kingsland, descend from the De Bernevals of Brittany. Sir Christopher Barnewall of Crickstown, in the county of Meath, was chief justice of the king's bench in Ireland in 1445–46. His eldest son, Nicholas, became chief justice of the common pleas in 1461. His second son Robert was knighted by King Edward IV; and in consideration of the good and faithful services done by him in Ireland to that king's father, he was created by letters patent, dated at Westminster 4 March 1461, baron of Trimleston in Ireland. ”

“ Johnson, and was a member of the club at the King's Head. ‘Dear Bathurst,’ Johnson used to say (Piozzi's Anecdotes) ‘was a man to my heart's content; he hated a fool and he hated a rogue, and he hated a whig: he was a very good hater.’ Bathurst was a contributor to the ‘Adventurer,’ conducted by Hawkesworth, with the assistance of Johnson and Joseph Warton. ”

“ John Bell had defied the power of a combination of some forty publishing firms, who called themselves 'the trade,' and issued books on the joint-stock principle, in order to secure a monopoly of the best publications. In 1777 these gentlemen met at the Chapter Coffee-house, Paternoster Row, and resolved to bring out a collection of the works of English poets, afterwards known as 'Johnson's Poets,' of which the first edition appeared in 1779, and the second in 1790. ”

“ The arrangement of the succession was not universally accepted, for in 1613, when King James I proposed to hold a parliament in Dublin, his majesty found it necessary to issue a special royal rescript on behalf of David, Lord Barry, commanding that ‘if the question of his right to sit in parliament should be stirred by any person it should be silenced.’ Lord Barry was accordingly present in that parliament, and on 20 May 1615 was appointed one of the council for the province of Munster. ”

“ FAIRFAX, JOHN (1804–1877) , journalist and member of the legislative council, New South Wales, was born at Warwick, England, in 1804. After a short time spent at school he was, at the age of twelve, apprenticed to a printer in his native town. Having served his time he went to London and worked for some years on the ‘Morning Chronicle’ newspaper. His next step was to set up as printer and bookseller in Leamington, near his home and friends. He also started a newspaper, and, having married, settled down as a leading member of the congregational body in that town. ”

“ In 1788 he came with his father to London, and soon afterwards became a pupil at the Royal Academy. Barker continued to be his father's chief assistant in the panoramas till the latter's death in 1806, when, as executor, he took the panorama into his own hands, and for twenty years carried on the exhibition with great success. He frequently travelled to make his own drawings for his pictures, and in August 1799 left England for Turkey, to make drawings for the panorama of Constantinople. ”

“ At the age of fifteen, Joshua Bates entered the counting-house of W. R. Gray, a merchant of high position and large business in Boston, and was shortly afterwards received into the office of Gray's father, with whom he remained till he was twenty-one. Upon coming of age he opened business in partnership with a Mr. Beckford, who had been a shipmaster in Gray's service. Upon the declaration of war with England in 1812, many business houses collapsed, and the young firm of Bates & Beckford fell in the general crash. ”

“ While still a young man he published a book under the title of 'Delphi Phoenicizantes,' Oxford, 1665, in which he attempted to prove that the Greeks borrowed the story of the 'Pythian Apollo' from the Hebrew scriptures. Anthony à Wood says that Henry Jacob, and not Dickinson, was the author of this book. This was followed by 'Diatriba de Noae in Italiam Adventu,' Oxford, 1655. In maturer age Dickinson published his notions of alchemy, in which he seems to have believed, in 'Epistola ad T. Mundanum de Quintessentia Philosophorum,' Oxford. ”

“ When the latter, after his capture at the battle of Worcester, was kept a prisoner in London, he fell 'very sick of the prevailing scorbutic,' and Bathurst interceded for him with the Protector, who, on the strength of the doctor's medical certificate, obtained at the council chamber the order for Fanshawe's liberation, overruling the strenuous objections of Sir Harry Vane. He was very charitable, and yet was said to have accumulated a fortune of 2,000l. a year. Bathurst married Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Brian Willance, Esq., of Clint, Yorkshire, and had a numerous family. ”

“ In May 1799 Brunel took out his first patent for a writing and drawing machine similar in principle to the pantagraph, and about the same time he invented a machine for winding cotton thread, which was largely adopted in cotton factories, but of which he neglected to secure the benefit by patent. He also invented various other ingenious machines of minor importance, which brought little profit to himself beyond the testimony they afforded of his mechanical skill. ”

“ Though he never quite abandoned attempts in imaginative literature, he is chiefly remembered by the series of entertaining memoirs, in which he strung together historical anecdotes of the later dynasties of British monarchs. He was still young when he published in 1840 the first of these, upon the court of the Stuarts. The success of this work encouraged him to bring out similar volumes on the protectorate, William III, the pretenders, and the house of Hanover. His ‘Memoir of George Selwyn and his Contemporaries’ met with great success. ”

“ He was only thirty-four years old in 1820 when he was appointed master of Jesus College by Dr. Sparke, bishop of Ely, in whose family he had been private tutor. In the following year he was made D.D. by royal mandate, and served the office of vice-chancellor, a position which he filled again in 1834, when he also acted as one of the syndics appointed to superintend the building of the Fitzwilliam Museum. He was presented by the lord chancellor to the living of Moor Monkton, Yorkshire, in 1827, and became a canon of Ely in 1832. ”

“ Areskine, chief physician and privy counsellor to the Czar Peter I, and embarked at London in the month of July 1714. An embassy was then preparing from the czar to the sophy of Persia, On Dr. Areskine's recommendation Bell was engaged in the service of the Russian emperor. He left St. Petersburg on 15 July 1715, and proceeded to Moscow, from thence to Cazan, and down the Wolga to Ostracan. The embassy then sailed down the Caspian Sea to Derbent, and journeyed by Mongan, Tauris, and Saba to Ispahan, where they arrived on 14 March 1717. ”

“ Among his patients here was the Earl of Arlington, lord chamberlain, whom he was fortunate enough to cure of an obstinate tumour. By him the doctor was recommended to the king (Charles II) , who appointed him one of his physicians in ordinary and physician to the household. The monarch being a great lover of chemistry took the doctor into special favour and had a laboratory built under the royal bedchamber, with communication by means of a private staircase. ”

“ In 1854 a joint commission was proposed by the English and American governments for the final consideration of certain claims arising from the peace of 1815. Bates was chosen as appellant arbitrator, and succeeded in discharging the delicate functions of his office to the satisfaction of both governments. Some of his decisions contain compendious discussions of important questions of international law. The amounts in private claims run into millions of dollars.
Bates was a benefactor to the city of Boston, having practically founded the Boston Public Library as it now exists. ”

“ During his period of training he was constantly employed by Stephenson in writing reports on works and arbitrations. Stephenson formed a high opinion of Berkeley, and obtained for him an appointment as chief resident engineer of the Churnet and Trent Valley railways. At the end of 1849, on the strong recommendation of Robert Stephenson, Brunei, Cubitt, Rennie, Bidder, and other eminent engineers, Berkley was appointed chief resident engineer of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, and in this capacity he constructed the first line of railway that was opened in India. ”

“ On the death of his father in 1869 Dickinson, who inherited a large fortune, was much occupied in the management of his property, and being in weak health he gave a less close attention to the business of the society than he had done. ”

“ He devoted himself especially to certain branches of surgery, such as ‘the help of hearing by the instrument, the cure of the hare-lip and the wry-neck, and diseases of the eyes.’ He studied under various persons eminent in these subjects, among whom were ‘Henry Blackborne, Robert Hall of Worcester, Master Velder of Fennie Stanton, Master Surflet of Lynn, and Master Barnabie of Peterborough.’ To complete his education he betook himself to the study of the best authors, as Rhazes, Mesne, Fernelius, Vesalius, &c. ”