no contributor recorded

“ In 1785 Kay finally relinquished his trade for art. He drew and etched many portraits, more or less caricatured. The earliest of his dated etchings is the portrait of himself, inscribed 1786. He sold his etchings in his little shop in the Parliament Close, Edinburgh, and these singly issued impressions show his prints at their best; but he was never an accomplished draughtsman or a master of the technicalities of etching. His work, which is solely of antiquarian value, affords a quaint picture of Edinburgh society in his time. ”

“ ASHTON or ASSHETON, Sir THOMAS de (fl. 1446) , alchemist, born in 1403, was the son and heir of Sir John de Ashton, of Ashton-under-Lyne [see Ashton, Sir John de] , who died in 1428. Permission was granted by Henry VI to Sir Thomas to transmute the precious metals, and on 7 April 1446 a special order was issued (Rot. Pat. 2, No. 14) , encouraging two Lancashire knights, Ashton and Sir Edmund de Trafford, to pursue their experiments in alchemy, and forbidding any subject of the king to molest them. Sir Thomas married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Byron, by whom he had eleven children. ”

“ When asked why he had taken up the cause of women's rights, he would say that he had seen a girl tried for child-murder, who had been betrayed by a man, was convicted by men, sentenced by a man, and hanged by a man. 'It made me think.' The cause represented his strongest convictions.
The opening of Mazzini's letters in 1844 led to a friendship with Ashurst. In 1851 and 1852 Ashurst was a founder of the society of the 'Friends of Italy' and of the 'People's International League.' He cordially welcomed many of the refugees at that time. ”

“ He joined Mill in another informal club for the discussion of economic questions about 1825-30, and was one of those who 'originated new speculations.' Ellis was through life a member of the school of economists led by Mill, and became conspicuous for what Mill calls his 'apostolic exertions for the improvement of education.' He was especially impressed by the importance of teaching political economy to children. ”

“ Collins was a man of great physical and mental vigour. He was over six feet high and powerfully built. He wrote several hours in the day, and again from ten to two at night. Besides contributing to newspapers, he wrote many novels and other works, and turned out an enormous quantity of playful verse for the amusement of his friends. He was a great athlete, a first-rate pedestrian, a lover of dogs, and a keen observer of nature. He revered White of Selborne, and wrote many interesting letters upon the habits of birds in the 'Times' and elsewhere. He was a mathematician and a good chess-player. ”

“ ASSER (d. 909?) , bishop of Sherborne and author of the 'Life of Ælfred the Great,' was a monk of St. David's (Menevia) , and related to Bishop Novis of that see. According to Giraldus Cambrensis (Itiner. Camb.) , Asser was at one time bishop of St. David's, but the statement rests on no contemporary authority. Like Grimbald and John, 'the Old Saxon,' Asser, who had a high reputation for learning, was invited by Alfred about 885 to enter his household. ”

“ In the next year appeared his ‘Natural History of the Year,’ and in 1799 he delivered a series of lectures in London on chemistry and chemical manufactures, the syllabus of which he published separately.
In 1807 Aikin, who had acquired the reputation of an enthusiastic scientific worker, took a foremost part in founding the Geological Society. To its early ‘Transactions’ he contributed several papers, embodying observations made by him in the west of England, and dealing almost entirely with mineralogy, and about 1811 he became its secretary. ”

“ His diocese at Lindisfarne embraced nearly all Northumbria. He rebuilt his church, after the Scottish fashion, of oaken planks thatched with reeds, and devoted himself to missionary work outside Northumbria. His chief success was in Mercia. Oswiu, king of Northumbria, made the conversion of Peada, Penda's son, a condition of the marriage of the Mercian prince with his own daughter Alchfleda. Finan baptised Peada near the river Tyne, probably at Benwell, and consecrated Diuma, one of his priests, first bishop of Mercia. ”

“ As master of Jesus College, Corrie showed unvarying tact, firmness combined with undeviating courtesy, and lively interest in the younger members of the society. The college rose greatly in reputation during his mastership, and he took a large share in the management of the estates. He had been imbued with patriotic principles in the great wars during his youth, and he was a leader of the conservative party at Cambridge. ”

“ CARTER, THOMAS (d. 1795) , sculptor, worked at Knightsbridge, and there attracted the attention of the painter Jervas, who gave him some money and a breakfast, procured him patronage, and so helped him to fortune. In 1755, when a committee was first formed to consider the founding of a Royal Academy, Carter was a member of it. He was Roubilliac's first employer in England. He appears to have been a man of great industry, if of inconspicuous merit. ”

“ CASTEELS, PETER (1684–1749) , painter and engraver, was one of that host of second-rate foreigners who found happy hunting-grounds in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was born in Antwerp in 1684; came to England in 1703, and revisited Antwerp in 1716. He shortly returned, however, and settled in this country. He painted birds, fowls, fruit, and flowers ‘in an inferior manner.’ He worked more successfully with the graver. Lord Burlington patronised him, and published, at his own charges, Casteels's ‘Villas of the Ancients,’ giving the artist the profits. ”

“ He could make competent Latin and English verses, knew something of botany, and was, besides, a musical composer, a student of heraldry, and a mathematician, being, he says, 'ever naturally addicted to those arts and sciences which consist of proportion and number.' Moreover he could paint, draw, and engrave portraits and landscapes. ”

“ On his return to London he established himself as a teacher of mathematics. In 1702 appeared his ‘New Compendium of the Whole Art of Navigation,’ which, besides showing the application of plane trigonometry to ‘Mercator's and middle latitude sailing,’ with several necessary astronomical problems, supplied practical rules of every kind for sea-going ships. Jones's next work, in 1706, attracted the notice of Sir Isaac Newton and Halley, with both of whom he remained on terms of friendship. ”

“ GIBSON, WILLIAM (1720–1791) , self-taught mathematician, born at Boulton, near Appleby, Westmoreland, in 1720, worked on a farm from childhood, and afterwards obtained a farm of his own at Hollins, near Cartmel Fell, Lancashire. He received no education whatever in youth, but in early manhood taught himself to read a book on arithmetic, and developed an extraordinary power of working out sums of all kinds in his head. He afterwards taught himself writing, and studied geometry, trigonometry, algebra, and astronomy, in all of which he proved himself an expert. ”

“ Lankester was elected after a hard and expensive fight by a majority of forty-seven in a total poll of 10,894, but incurred a debt which weighed him down till his death. He now threw himself entirely into work connected with the public health, and except occasional lectures in ladies' schools and the summer courses at the gardens of the Royal Botanical Society, he abandoned his connection with botany and natural history. He advocated the teaching of physiology in schools, and produced a school manual of 'Health, or Practical Physiology' (1868) . ”

“ FINGLAS, PATRICK (fl. 1535) , Irish judge, was appointed baron of the exchequer in Ireland by Henry VIII in or before 1520, and afterwards, by patent dated at Westminster 8 May 1533, he was constituted chief justice of the king's bench in that kingdom in the place of Sir Bartholomew Dillon. ”

“ Receiving a good education, Jones showed a strong bias towards mathematics. Going to London he entered a merchant's counting-house, and in his service visited the West Indies. He afterwards taught mathematics on board a man-of-war and thus obtained the friendship of Lord Anson. ”

“ The consequent shallowness of the steeple, as seen from the north or south side, is the only serious defect in the design of this building. Although one of Gibbs's very finest works, it can scarcely be called truly distinctive of him, as its delicate beauty suggests the influence of Wren. In 1719 Gibbs added the steeple and the two upper stages to the tower of Wren's church of St. Clement Danes in the Strand. His next church was ‘Marybone Chapel,’ better known as St Peter's, Vere Street, begun in 1721 by Harley, earl of Oxford. ”

“ He became better known as a vigorous tory pamphleteer. In 1702 he published a pamphlet called ‘The History of the Last Parliament.’ It was written in the tory interest and accused the whigs of contemplating a ‘new model’ of ‘government’ and of systematically traducing the princess, now Queen Anne. The House of Lords had been investigating the report that William had plotted to secure the succession to the crown for the elector of Hanover. Drake's pamphlet was noticed in the course of the debate. ”

“ On the evening of 12 May, as Dorislaus was sitting down to supper at the Witte Zwaan, six men burst into his rooms, and while some of them secured his servants, Whitford, after slashing him over the head, passed a sword through his body, and said, ‘Thus dies one of the king's judges’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 666) . The whole party, leaving their victim dead upon the ground, made their escape, and Whitford succeeded in crossing the frontier into the Spanish Netherlands, where he was in perfect safety. All royalists received the news of the murder with unbounded satisfaction. ”

“ Gerbier states that he was favoured by the Duke of Orleans. The duke and the old Prince of Condé were to be protector-generals of the establishment. He received a patent under the great seal of France. The queen regent was thereupon accused of protecting a protestant. One ‘Will Crafts [Crofts] immediately whipt in,’ alleging that Gerbier was not the father of the children in his family, and had made them protestants by force. Gerbier's project was stopped; three of his daughters were carried to an English nunnery called Sion, and he himself constrained to quit France. ”

“ CASE, JOHN (d. 1600) , writer on Aristotle, was born at Woodstock, and was a chorister at New College and Christ Church, Oxford. He was elected to a scholarship at St. John's in 1564. He was B.A. in 1568, M.A. 1572, and became a fellow of his college. He had a high reputation as a disputant. Being ‘popishly affected,’ says Wood, he ‘left his fellowship and married.’ His wife was the widow of ‘one Dobson, the keeper of Bocardo prison.’ He obtained leave from the university to read logic and philosophy to young men, chiefly Roman catholics, in his own house. ”

“ Being unable to regain his position at court, he once more turned to architecture, and in 1662 supplied the designs for Lord Craven's house at Hampstead Marshall, in Berkshire, since destroyed by fire. In the same year he published ‘A Brief Discourse concerning the Three chief Principles of Magnificent Building,’ &c., and in the following year, 1663, ‘Counsel and Advise to all Builders,’ &c.; the most interesting of his pamphlets from incidental references to English architecture in the seventeenth century. ”

“ Walshman, a practitioner in midwifery, and henceforth devoted himself exclusively to this branch of his profession, in which his reputation became so high that he was selected as a medical witness before the committee of the House of Peers upon the question of the Gardner peerage. He devoted a large proportion of his time to gratuitous practice among the poor, and died, literally worn out by his benevolent exertions, on 23 Jan. ”

“ BORRELL, H. P. (d. 1851) , numismatist, after learning business in London, established himself as a trader at Smyrna, where he resided for thirty-three years. He devoted much of his attention to the discovery of inedited Greek coins, in which he was remarkably successful. The results of his discoveries ivere given in papers contributed to the ‘Revue Numismatique,’ the ‘Numismatic Chronicle,’ and various German periodicals devoted to numismatic science. ”

“ BATTLEY, RICHARD (1770–1856) , chemist, was the son of an architect in Wakefield, where he was born about 1770. He was educated at the Wakefield grammar school, and after serving as pupil with a physician at Wakefield was appointed medical attendant in connection with the collieries in the district of Newcastle-on-Tyne. He then went to London to attend the medical schools, and after concluding his studies entered the service of the navy as an assistant surgeon, and was present at several engagements under Sir Sidney Smith. ”

“ The weight of probability seems therefore in favour of the theory that the 'Tragedie' was the work of Lady Carey's daughter before she became the wife of Sir Thomas Berkeley, eldest son of the eleventh Lord Berkeley. ”

“ Lord Guildford was married by his father's direction to Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duke of Suffolk [see Dudley, Lady Jane] . This marriage was part of the desperate project of Northumberland for transferring the succession of the crown from the Tudor family to his own. By the instrument which he prevailed on the dying young king to sign (21 June) the crown was to go from both the king's sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, to the heirs male of Frances, duchess of Suffolk, provided that any should be born before the king's death ”