OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pole, Ralph

​POLE or DE LA POLE, RALPH (fl. 1452), judge, was the eldest of three sons of Peter De la Pole of Radborne, near Derby, and knight of the shire for Derbyshire in 1400–1. Foss wrongly makes him a younger son of Thomas Pole or Poole of Poole Hall in Wirral or Wirrell, who did not marry until 1425. The De la Poles were a Derbyshire and Staffordshire family seated at Hartington and Newborough, who for three generations had married heiresses in those counties. Pole's father acquired the Radborne estate, which had belonged to Sir John Chandos [q. v.], through his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Lawton and Alianore, one of Chandos's sisters and ultimate heir.
Pole became serjeant-at-law in the Michaelmas term of 1442, and a justice of the king's bench on 3 July 1452, and occurs in the latter capacity until Michaelmas 1459. He was probably the Radulphus de la Pole appointed one of the Derbyshire commissioners to raise money for the defence of Calais in May 1455, and he presided with Justice Bingham at the York assizes in 1457, when the Nevilles got the Percys muleted in a huge fine.
[Foss's Judges of England; Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, ed. Nicolas, vi. 243; Topographer and Genealogist, i. 176; Whethamstede's Registrum, Rolls Ser. i. 206, 208, 303; Lysons's Magna Britannia, vol. v. pp. xciv–v, 91, 232; Ormerod's Cheshire, ii. 423, iii. 351; Newcome's Hist. of St. Albans, p. 361; Burke's Landed Gentry; Official Returns of Members of Parliament, 1878.]
J. T-t.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pole, John de la (1464?-1487)

​POLE, JOHN de la, Earl of Lincoln (1464?–1487), born about 1464, was eldest son of John de la Pole, second duke of Suffolk [q. v.], by Elizabeth, sister to Edward IV. He was created Earl of Lincoln on 13 March 1466–7, and knight of the Bath on 18 April 1475, and attended Edward IV's funeral in April 1483. Richard III seems to have secured him firmly to his party. He bore the orb at Richard's coronation, 7 July 1483, and the same month he was made president of the council of the north (cf. Letters and Papers of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. Gairdner, i. 56). Richard's son Edward died on 9 April 1484, and one of his offices, that of lord lieutenant of Ireland, was conferred upon the Earl of Lincoln on the following 21 Aug. He continued to hold this office for the rest of the reign, the duties being performed, or neglected, by the Earl of Kildare. It now became necessary for Richard III to find an heir to the throne. Edward, earl of Warwick (1475–1499) [q. v.], son of the Duke of Cla​rence, had a strong claim, and he was certainly allowed to take precedence of the Earl of Lincoln after the death of the Prince of Wales. But, on the other hand, Warwick was a mere boy, and if he had any claim to be heir, he had an equally valid claim to be king. Hence, after some deliberation, Lincoln was selected as the heir to the throne. Richard was very generous to him. He gave him the reversion to the estates of Lady Margaret Beaufort [q. v.], subject to the life interest of her third husband, Lord Stanley; and in the meantime he was to have a pension of 176l. a year. He was with Richard at Bosworth; but Henry VII had no wish to alienate his family, and Lincoln, after Richard's defeat and death, took an oath with others in 1485 not to maintain felons. On 5 July 1486 he was appointed a justice of oyer and terminer. None the less he seems to have cherished the ambition to succeed Richard, and he was the real centre of the plot of Lambert Simnel. Suddenly he fled in the early part of 1487 to Brabant, and thence went to Ireland, where he joined Simnel's army, and, crossing to England, was killed at the battle of Stoke on 16 June 1487. He was attainted. He had married, first, Margaret Fitzalan, daughter of Thomas, twelfth earl of Arundel; and, secondly, the daughter and heiress of Sir John Golafre, but left no children. His brothers Edmund and Richard are noticed separately.
W. A. J. A.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wolstenholme, John

​WOLSTENHOLME, Sir JOHN (1562–1639), merchant-adventurer, of an old Derbyshire family, was the second son of John Wolstenholme, who came to London in the reign of Edward VI and obtained a post in the customs. The son at an early age became one of the richest merchants in London, and during the last half of his life took a prominent part in the extension of English commerce, in colonisation, and in maritime discovery. In December 1600 he was one of the incorporators of the East India Company; in 1609 he was a member of council for the Virginia Company; he took a lively interest in the attempts to discover a north-west passage; was one of those who fitted out the expeditions of Henry Hudson (d. 1611) [q. v.] (who named Cape Wolstenholme after him) in 1610; of (Sir) Thomas Button [q. v.] in 1612, of Robert Bylot [q. v.] and William Baffin [q. v.] in 1615 (when his name was given to Wolstenholme Island and Wolstenholme Sound), and of Luke Fox [q. v.] in 1631. Together with Sir Thomas Smith (Smythe) (1558?–1625) [q. v.] he engaged Edward Wright (1558?–1615) [q. v.] to give lectures on navigation. On 12 March 1617 he was knighted. In February 1619 he was a commissioner of the navy, but in December 1619 he was confined to his house by the king's command ‘for muttering against a patent and newly erected office in the customs house.’ As he was one of the farmers of the customs, the innovation presumably threatened to affect his interests. On 15 July 1624 he was appointed a commissioner for winding up the affairs of the Virginia Company; for several years afterwards he was a member of the king's council for Virginia; in 1631 he was a commissioner for the plantation of Virginia. In 1635–7 he was on a commission to inquire into the administration of the chest at Chatham. He died on 25 Nov. 1639, and was buried in Great Stanmore church, where there is a handsome monument to his memory by Nicholas Stone [q. v.] He married Catherine Fanshawe, and had issue two sons and two daughters. Of the daughters, the elder, Joan, married Sir Robert Knollys; the other, Catherine, married William Fanshawe, a nephew of Sir Thomas Smythe, and half-brother of Sir Henry Fanshawe [q. v.]; [see also Fanshawe, Thomas].
J. K. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wolstenholme, Dean (1798-1883)

​WOLSTENHOLME, DEAN, the younger (1798–1883), animal painter and engraver, son of Dean Wolstenholme the elder [q. v.], was born near Waltham Abbey in Essex on 21 April 1798, and, unlike his father, received a regular training in his art. The first picture which he exhibited at the Royal Academy was a portrait of ‘Beach,’ a favourite bitch. In 1822 he exhibited at the academy a painting of the Black Eagle brewery of Messrs. Truman, Hanbury, & Buxton, the first of a series of paintings of the great London breweries, which included portraits of the drayhorses and of some of the brewery men. About 1830 he painted a full-length portrait of Lord Glamis in highland costume. He also painted and engraved the Essex Hunt, with portraits of members, horses, and hounds, together with several sets of sporting pictures.
About 1846 he turned to historical subjects, the most important of which were a ‘Hunting Picture of Queen Elizabeth’ and ‘Queen Elizabeth visiting Kenilworth Castle by Torchlight.’ His best known works were ‘The Burial of Tom Moody’ and ‘The Shade of Tom Moody.’ He died at Highgate on 12 April 1883.
E. C.-e.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wombwell, George

​WOMBWELL, GEORGE (1778–1850), founder of Wombwell's menageries, was born at Maldon in Essex in 1778, and as a young man kept a cordwainer's shop in Monmouth Street, Soho. About 1804 he bought as a speculation two boa-constrictors for 75l. In three weeks he more than cleared his expenses by exhibiting them, and next year he set to work to form a menagerie which he built up until it became by far the finest travelling collection in the kingdom. He travelled mainly from one large fair to another, and many stories are told of his rivalries with Atkins and other menagerie owners, especially in connection with Bartholomew Fair, of which moribund institution he was one of the last upholders. Much interest was excited in July 1825 by a ‘match’ arranged at Warwick between Wombwell's large lion Nero and six dogs of the bull-and-mastiff breed; but ‘the lovers of brutal sports were disappointed of their banquet,’ for Nero refused to fight, and when he was replaced by a smaller lion, Wallace, the dogs who survived the first few seconds of the encounter could not be induced to face their enemy again (Wade, Brit. Chronology, s.a. 1825, 26 July); Wombwell displayed ‘a disgusting picture of the fight outside his show.’ At Croydon one year Wombwell startled the frequenters of the fair by announcing the exhibition of a ‘bonassus,’ which turned out to be a bison; the pride of the show in 1830 was the ‘Elephant of Siam.’ He was very successful in breeding carnivorous animals, and became the proprietor of over twenty lions. His caravans are stated to have numbered forty, and he had a fine stud of 120 drayhorses. The cost of maintenance of his three ‘monstre menageries’ was estimated at over 100l. a day, the payment for turnpike tolls alone forming a heavy item of expenditure. Wombwell died of bronchitis on 16 Nov. 1850 at Northallerton, where his show (which he followed to the last in a special travelling carriage) was then exhibiting. His remains were conveyed to his house in the Commercial Road, London, and buried at Highgate in the presence of an enormous concourse of people. He left a widow and a daughter, Mrs. Barnescombe, wife of an army accoutrement maker, who had long taken a part in the business, and who took over his No. 1 menagerie; a second went to his nephew, George Wombwell, junior, and a third to his niece, Mrs. Edmonds.
Wombwell took the keenest interest in the welfare of the animals. ‘No one probably did more,’ said the ‘Times,’ ‘to forward practically the study of natural history ​among the masses.’ Hone severely delineates him in the ‘Table Book’ as ‘undersized in mind as well as in form, a weazen, sharp-faced man, with a skin reddened by more than natural spirits.’ A portrait of George Wombwell was engraved for Chambers's ‘Book of Days’ (ii. 586).
[Gent. Mag. 1851 i. 320; Men of the Reign; Times, 27 Nov. 1850; Era, 1 Dec. 1850; Frost's Circus Life and Celebrities, 1875; Morley's Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair, p. 383; D. P. Miller's Life of a Showman, 1849, p. 44; Verses addressed to Mr. Wombwell, the great menagerist, at Weldon Fair, 1838 (Brit. Mus.).]
T. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wolstenholme, Dean (1757-1837)

​WOLSTENHOLME, DEAN, the elder (1757–1837), animal painter, was born in Yorkshire. Most of his early life was spent in Essex and Hertfordshire. He resided successively at Cheshunt, Turnford, and Waltham Abbey. His early life was rather that of an enthusiastic sportsman than of an artist, though he occasionally produced representations of a few sporting subjects with such success that Sir Joshua Reynolds is said to have predicted that he would be a painter in earnest before he died. In 1793 he became involved in litigation over some property at Waltham, and after three unsuccessful chancery suits was left with means so encumbered that he adopted painting as a profession.
About 1800 he came to London and settled in East Street, Red Lion Square. In 1803 he exhibited his first picture (‘Coursing’) at the Royal Academy. From this year to 1824 a long series of animal pictures from his hand appeared at the academy. ​After 1826 he painted little. He died in 1837 at the age of eighty, and was buried in Old St. Pancras churchyard. His son, Dean Wolstenholme [q. v.], is noticed separately.
E. C.-e.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wood, Alexander (1725-1807)

1904 Errata appended.
​WOOD, ALEXANDER (1725–1807), surgeon, born at Edinburgh in 1725, was the son of Thomas Wood and grandson of Jasper Wood of Warriston in Midlothian. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, and after taking out his diploma settled at Musselburgh, where he practised successfully for a time. He then removed to Edinburgh, became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons on 14 Jan. 1756, and entered into partnership with John Rattray and Charles Congleton, to whose practice he subsequently succeeded. He possessed considerable ability as a surgeon, and was one of those whom Sir Walter Scott's parents consulted concerning his lameness (Lockhart, Memoirs of Scott, 1845, p. 5). He attained great celebrity in Edinburgh, where his philanthropy and kindness were proverbial. His character made him extremely popular with the townsfolk, and one night during a riot, when the mob, mistaking him for the provost, Sir James Stirling (1740?–1805) [q. v.], were about to throw him over the North Bridge, he saved himself by exclaiming ‘I'm lang Sandy Wood; tak' me to a lamp and ye'll see.’ Byron held him in high esteem, and in a fragment of a fifth canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ which appeared in ‘Blackwood's Magazine’ in May 1818, he wrote:
Oh! for an hour of him who knew no feud, The octogenarian chief, the kind old Sandy Wood!
and spoke of him very warmly in a note to the stanza. Wood died in Edinburgh on 12 May 1807. An epitaph was composed for him by Sir Alexander Boswell [q. v.]; and John Bell (1763–1820) [q. v.], who had been his pupil, dedicated to him the first volume of his ‘Anatomy.’ Two portraits of him were executed by John Kay (1742–1826) [q. v.], and a portrait by George Watson is in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. He married Veronica Chalmers. One of his sons, Sir Alexander Wood, was chief secretary at Malta, and one of his grandsons, Alexander Wood, became a lord of session in 1842 with the title Lord Wood.
[Kay's Edinburgh Portraits, ed. Paterson and Maidment, 1885, i. 115–19; List of Fellows of the Edinburgh Royal College of Surgeons.]
E. I. C.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.283 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 347 | i | l.l. | Wood, Alexander (1725-1807): for His father was the youngest son of Wood read He was the son of Thomas Wood and grandson of Jasper Wood |
| | ii | 40 | after Edinburgh insert He married Veronica Chalmers |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/King, Richard (1748-1810)

​KING, RICHARD (1748–1810), divine, born on 30 Nov. 1748, was son of Henry King of St. Augustine, Bristol. He was admitted scholar of Winchester in 1762 (Kirby, Winchester Scholars, p. 258), matriculated at Oxford from Queen's College on 4 April 1767, and was elected fellow of New College in 1768, graduating B.A. in 1772, and M.A. in 1776 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886, ii. 796). In 1782 he resigned his fellowship, receiving the college livings of Worthen, Shropshire, and Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire. He died at the latter place on 30 Oct. 1810 (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxx. pt. ii. p. 589).
King wrote: 1. ‘A Discourse on the Inspiration of the Scriptures,’ 8vo, London, 1805. 2. ‘Remarks on the Alliance between Church and State, and on the Test Laws,’ 8vo, London, 1807. 3. ‘Brother Abraham's Answer to Peter Plymley [i.e. to the “Letters on the subject of the Catholics to my brother Abraham, who lives in the Country,” by Sydney Smith] … in two Letters; to which is prefixed a “Postliminious” Preface,’ 8vo, London, 1808.
On 17 Aug. 1782 he married Frances Elizabeth, third daughter of Sir Francis Bernard, bart. [q. v.]
His wife, Frances Elizabeth King, was born on 25 July 1757. After the death of her husband she resided at Gateshead, Durham, so as to be near her two married daughters, and died there on 23 Dec. 1821 (Gent. Mag. vol. xcii. pt. i. p. 90). An intimate friend of Hannah More, she established under her guidance societies for visiting the sick poor and schools for their children. To the ‘Reports’ issued by the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, under the editorship of her brother, Sir Thomas Bernard [q. v.], she contributed many papers. Her other writings are: 1. ‘A Tour in France,’ 12mo, London, 1803. 2. ‘The Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper on Domestic Happiness,’ 2nd edit. 8vo, London, 1807; 6th edit. 1825. 3. ‘Female Scripture Characters; exemplifying Female Virtues,’ 16mo, London, 1813; 10th edit. 1826, to which her portrait, engraved by Scriven after Hastings, is prefixed. 4. ‘The Rector's Memorandum Book, being Memoirs of a Family in the North’ [anon.], 12mo, London, 1814 (and 1819). Her portrait was also engraved by Woolnoth.
[Memoir prefixed to Mrs. King's Female Scripture Characters, 3rd edit.; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, ii. 233.]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/King, Richard (1774-1834)

​KING, Sir RICHARD, the younger (1774–1834), vice-admiral, born in 1774, was only son of Admiral Sir Richard King [q. v.] He entered the navy in 1788 on board the Crown in the East Indies with Commodore (afterwards Sir William) Cornwallis [q. v.], by whom he was made lieutenant in 1791, commander in 1793, and captain in 1794. On his return to England he was appointed in November 1794 to the Aurora for cruising service in the Channel. During the continuance of the war he commanded different ships with credit in the Channel and the North Sea. In April 1804 he was appointed to the Achille of 74 guns, in which, on 21 Oct. 1805, he took part in the battle of Trafalgar. On the death of his father in November 1806, King succeeded to the baronetcy, but continued in the Achille, employed on the west coast of France or Spain till 1811, when he was appointed captain of the fleet to Sir Charles Cotton [q. v.] in the Mediterranean and afterwards in the Channel. He was promoted to be rear-admiral on 12 Aug. 1812, and for the rest of the war had his flag in the San Josef, in the Mediterranean, as second in command to Sir Edward Pellew [q. v.], afterwards Viscount Exmouth. He was nominated a K.C.B. 2 Jan. 1815, was commander-in-chief in the East Indies from 1816 to 1820, and became a vice-admiral on 19 July 1821. In July 1833 he was appointed commander-in-chief at the Nore, and died at Admiralty House, Sheerness, on 5 Aug. 1834. King was twice married, first, in 1803, to Sarah Anne, only daughter of Sir John Thomas Duckworth [q. v.]; secondly, in 1822, to Maria Susanna, daughter of Sir Charles Cotton, and left issue by both wives. His second son by the first marriage, Admiral Sir George St. Vincent Duckworth King, K.C.B. (d. 1891), succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his elder brother in 1847, was captain of the Leander, and afterwards of the Rodney, in ​the Black Sea during the Russian war in 1854–5, and was second in command of the naval brigade at the siege of Sebastopol. He became a rear-admiral in 1863, was commander-in-chief in China from 1863 to 1867, was made vice-admiral in 1867, and admiral in 1875. He died on 18 Aug. 1891.
[Marshall's Royal Nav. Biog. vol. i. pt. ii. p. 545; Ralfe's Nav. Biog. iii. 126; O'Byrne's Nav. Biog. Dict. (s. n. ‘King, George St. Vincent’); United Service Journal, 1834, iii. 232; see also Foster's Baronetage.]
J. K. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/King, Peter John Locke

​KING, PETER JOHN LOCKE (1811–1885), politician, second son of Peter King, seventh baron King [q. v.], and brother of William King-Noel, first earl of Lovelace, was born at Ockham, Surrey, on 25 Jan. 1811. He was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1831, and M.A. 1833. In 1837 he unsuccessfully contested East Surrey, but was elected for that constituency on 11 Aug. 1847, and retained his seat until the conservative reaction at the general election in February 1874. He supported an alteration in the law of primogeniture for many sessions. On 15 March 1855 he delivered a speech in which he showed emphatically ‘the crying injustice of the law.’ On 11 Aug. 1854 he passed the Real Estate Charges Act, according to which mortgaged estates descend with and bear their own burdens. In the session of 1856 he was successful in obtaining the repeal of 120 sleeping statutes which were liable to be put in force from time to time. He also waged war against the statute law commission, and more than once denounced it as a job. King introduced a bill for abolishing the property qualification of members, which passed the House of Lords on 28 June 1858, and in eight successive sessions he brought forward the county franchise bill, on one occasion, 20 Feb. 1851, defeating and causing the resignation of the Russell ministry. He succeeded in carrying through the House of Commons a bill for extending the 10l. franchise to the county constituencies, so as to include every adult male who came within the conditions of the borough suffrage. He was also well known for his advocacy of the ballot and of the abolition of church rates, and for his strenuous opposition to the principle and practice alike of endowments for religious purposes. He died at Brooklands, Weybridge, on 12 Nov. 1885. He married, on 22 March 1836, Louisa Elizabeth, daughter of William Henry Hoare of Mitcham Grove, Surrey. She died in 1884, leaving two sons and four daughters.
King was the author of:
* ‘Injustice of the Law of Succession to the Real Property of Intestates,’ 1854; 3rd edit. 1855.
* ‘Speech on the Laws relating to the Property of Intestates,’ 15 March 1855.
* ‘Speech on the Laws relating to the Property of Intestates in the House of Commons,’ 17 Feb. 1859.
* ‘Speech on the Law relating to the Real Estates of Intestates,’ 14 July 1869.
Four letters which King wrote to the ‘Times’ in 1855 on ‘Chancery Reform’ are reprinted in ‘A Bleak House Narrative of Real Life,’ 1856, pp. 55–66.
[Hansard, 1849, ciii. 88 et seq.; Statesmen of England, 1862, No. 46, with portrait; Drawing-room Portrait Gallery, 2nd ser. 1859, with portrait; Foster's Peerage; Times, 14 Nov. 1885, p. 9.]
G. C. B.