OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Harrison, George (d.1841)

​HARRISON, Sir GEORGE (d. 1841), legal writer, son of Thomas Harrison, attorney-general and advocate-general of Jamaica, studied law, was appointed by Pitt registrar for the redemption of the land tax (1798); counsel to the war office, the commander-in-chief's office, and the barrack office (1804); and assistant secretary to the treasury (1805). In 1823 he was made auditor for life of the duchy of Cornwall, and in 1826 auditor for life of the duchy of Lancaster. He was made a knight of the grand cross of the Royal Hanoverian and Guelphic order 13 April 1831. He died at Spring Gardens Terrace, London, 3 Feb. 1841. He was twice married, and had a son by his first wife.
Harrison wrote: 1. ‘Observations in support of the Title of the King to all Escheats and Forfeitures arising within the Fees or Liberties of the Duchy of Lancaster,’ &c., 1832. 2. ‘Fragments of History,’ 1834. 3. ‘Substance of a Report on the Laws and Jurisdiction of the Stannaries in Cornwall,’ 1835. 4. ‘Memoir respecting the Hereditary Revenues of the Crown and the Revenues of the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, and Remonstrance and Petition addressed to the Chancellor and Council of the Duchy of Lancaster,’ 1838.
[The Knightage of Great Britain and Ireland, 1841; Gent. Mag. 1841, i. 328; Times, 5 Feb. 1841; Addit. MSS. 20139 f. 104, 20201 f. 78, 22902 f. 147, 29472–4 (including some of official correspondence, 1812–1819), 32166, f. 51.]
F. W-t.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Harrison, George Henry

​HARRISON, GEORGE HENRY (1816–1846), water-colour painter, born in Liverpool in 1816, was the second son of Mary Harrison [q. v.], the flower-painter. He came to London at the age of fourteen, and improved his practice and pocket by working for the dealers. Subsequently he was engaged in making anatomical and other medical drawings and illustrations, and in studying anatomy at the Hunterian school in Windmill Street. He derived much benefit from the advice and encouragement of John Constable, R.A., who showed him great kindness, criticising his sketches, and urging him continually to study nature closely. In 1840 he first exhibited at the Royal Academy, and in 1845 he was elected an associate of the Old Water-Colour Society in Pall Mall. A painful disease forced him to travel in search of health. In Paris, as he had done in London and its neighbourhood, he formed classes for out-of-door sketching, and was very successful. His works were chiefly landscapes and domestic scenes, and the influence of Watteau and Boucher is discernible in some of his paintings. 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. The ​ sketches of ‘Fontainebleau’ and ‘St. Cloud,’ which he executed in the last year of his life, show his mastery of his art. An example of his work may be seen in the South Kensington Museum. According to Graves he exhibited between 1840 and 1846 twenty-seven pictures: fourteen at the Royal Academy, two at the British Institution, eleven at Suffolk Street. He died of aneurism on 20 Oct. 1846.
[Bryan's Dict. 1885; Ottley's Dict. 1866; Redgrave's Dict. 1874; Graves's Dict. of Artists who have exhibited.]
R. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Harrison, Joseph

​HARRISON, JOSEPH (d. 1858?), was for some years head-gardener to Lord Wharncliffe at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield. In 1833 he started ‘The Floricultural Cabinet,’ a monthly magazine. In 1837 he left his employment to begin business as a florist at Downham in Norfolk. Not succeeding very well, he moved to Kingston in Surrey. He relinquished his editorial duties in 1855 to ​his two sons, who continued the publication as far as the twenty-seventh volume in 1859, when it was altered to a weekly print as ‘The Gardener's Weekly Magazine,’ finally passing into the hands of Collingridge, the printer, and under a new editor it became the current ‘Gardener's Magazine.’ Harrison also edited ‘The Horticultural Register,’ vol. i. 1831, in conjunction with J. Paxton; ‘The Gardener's and Forester's Record,’ 1833; ‘The Garden Almanack’ for 1843; and ‘The Gardener's and Naturalist's Almanack,’ commenced in 1853 and still in progress.
[Pref. Flor. Cab.; manuscript information; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
B. D. J.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkshaw, Benjamin

​HAWKSHAW, BENJAMIN (d. 1738), divine, was born in Dublin, and entered Trinity College in 1687. He left Ireland upon the revolution, and entered St. John's College, Cambridge; graduated B.A. there in 1691, and subsequently returned to Dublin, where he proceeded B.A. in 1693 and M.A. two years afterwards. He took orders, and was appointed to the parish of St. Nicholas-within-the-Walls at Dublin. He died in 1738. He was author of an octavo volume entitled ‘Poems upon Several Occasions,’ which was ‘printed by J. Heptinstall for Henry Dickinson, Bookseller in Cambridge,’ in 1693. In the dedicatory letter to ‘the Learned and Ingineous Dr. Willoughby,’ prefixed to the volume, the poet describes his effusions as ‘the essays but of a very young pen, a few by-thoughts in my vacancies from Irish studies.’ He also published in 1709 ‘The Reasonableness of constant Communion with the Church of England represented to the Dissenters.’
W. C. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkins, William (1673-1746)

​HAWKINS, WILLIAM (1673–1746), serjeant, a descendant of Sir John Hawkins or Hawkyns [q. v.], and second son of John Hawkins and Mary, daughter of Edward Dewe of Islip, Oxfordshire, was born in 1673. In 1689 he graduated B.A. at St. John's College, Cambridge, and M.A. in 1693. He was admitted a member of the Inner Temple 10 Feb. 1700, and was called to the bar on 29 June 1707. He became a serjeant-at-law on 1 Feb. 1723. Though his name is not mentioned in the ‘State Trials’ (xvii. 367), he appeared with other counsel for the wardens of the Fleet, Huggins and Bambridge, on their trials respectively for the murders of ​Arne and Castell, prisoners in the Fleet, who died of hardship and ill-usage there. His great work was his ‘Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown,’ of which there were folio editions in 1716, 1724, 1739, 1762, and 1771. He also published in 1711 an abridgment of the first part of ‘Coke's Institutes,’ which ran through many editions, and is praised by Blackstone (Commentaries, b. iii. c. xvii.); in 1728 an abridgment of his own ‘Pleas,’ and in 1735 a collection of statutes at large. He died in 1746. He married, firstly, Miss Jenyns, daughter of Sir Robert Jenyns of Cambridgeshire, and secondly, Miss Ram of Coleraine, co. Londonderry; a son, William Hawkins [q. v.], by his first wife, is separately noticed.
J. A. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkins, William (d.1589)

​HAWKINS or HAWKYNS, WILLIAM (d. 1589), sea-captain and merchant, was son of William Hawkins (d. 1553) [q. v.], and elder brother of Sir John Hawkins (1532–1595) [q. v.] In 1553–4 he was admitted to the freedom of Plymouth. He took a prominent part in local affairs, and was three times mayor: in 1567–8, in 1578–9, and again in 1587–8. It was during his first mayoralty that the earliest bylaws for the regulation of the shipping in Sutton Pool were issued. In the following year, 1568–9, he built, it is said, the new conduit associated with the Market Cross in the Old Town. It is, however, as a shipowner that his name enters more prominently into history. From the beginning of the disturbances in the Low Countries his vessels cruised in the Channel; nominally privateers, they bore a close resemblance to pirates. In 1568 he held the commission of the Prince de Condé to act against the ships of the League. In December 1568 he was associated with Sir Arthur Champernowne in seizing the Spanish treasure at Plymouth. On 20 Jan. 1568–9 he sent to Cecil the news of the disastrous defeat of his brother John at San Juan de Lua, and requested that a share of the Spanish goods detained in Plymouth might be allotted to him in compensation. On 27 Jan. 1568–9 he sent word to Cecil of his brother's return home. Complaints innumerable of the depredations committed by his cruisers were made by the king of France and the Spanish ambassador. These ships were apparently owned jointly with his brother John; it is impossible to distinguish between the two, the more so as neither of them seems to have taken any personal part in the acts complained of; but the name of Hawkyns, in its French form Haquin, or in Spanish Achines, became a sound of terror in the narrow seas. In 1582 he commanded an expedition to the West Indies, of which, however, nothing is known beyond the mention of it by his nephew, Sir Richard Hawkyns (The Hawkins' Voyages, Hakluyt Society, p. 212). During his third mayoralty he helped to fit out from Plymouth seven ships against the Armada, was active in collecting reinforcements for the fleet, and in April 1589 contributed 25l. to the loan raised to defray the expenses of defence. He died on 7 Oct. 1589, and was buried in the church of St. Nicholas, Deptford, where a monument to his memory was erected by his brother, but no trace of it now remains. His will was proved in London on 20 Oct. 1589. By a first wife Hawkyns was father of William Hawkins or Hawkyns (fl. 1595) [q. v.] and of three daughters. His second wife was Mary, daughter of John Halse, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. His widow afterwards married Sir Warwick Hele.
[Notes supplied by Miss Mary W. S. Hawkins; Cal. State Papers (1568–89); Froude's Hist. of England; Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1883; Miss Hawkins's Plymouth Armada Heroes.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkins, Susanna

​HAWKINS, SUSANNA (1787–1868), Scottish poetess, daughter of a blacksmith near Ecclefechan, was born in 1787. Dedicating her poems to a lady of the house of Queensberry, she describes her birthplace as adjoining ‘the famed camp of Burnswark, where the brave Caledonians fought against the Romans.’ Receiving a meagre education, Susanna was in early life a herd and a domestic servant, but at length obtained some elementary knowledge, and became an author ​in her middle age. The proprietor of the ‘Dumfries Courier,’ charmed with her as a character, gratuitously printed her poems in little volumes with paper covers, and for half a century she was known as a wandering minstrel of the borders. She sold her booklets from house to house, travelling far in search of natives of Dumfries. She penetrated into England; and a genial Manchester patron declared that there were two forces a Dumfriesian in England could not escape—death and Susy Hawkins. Sir F. W. Johnstone, bart., of Wester Hall, Dumfriesshire, granted her ground for a cottage at Relief, near her brother's residence in the neighbourhood of Ecclefechan, and here she died through an accident, 29 March 1868.
The little volumes are all more or less reprints of one another, and they are now rare. It seems that Susanna began to publish about 1826, but what appears to be a first edition of ‘The Poems and Songs of Susanna Hawkins’ is dated 1838. This contains sixty pages; subsequent volumes reach six pages more. Nine volumes in all are extant, the last being published in 1861, and it is surmised that there might be one or two more. The poems are largely of a local and occasional character, and though fairly well rhymed are generally more rhetorical than poetic. The lofty autobiographical dedication is more entertaining than the verses it precedes.
[Irving's Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen; Dumfries Courier and Annan Observer; information from Mr. Cuthbertson of the Annan Observer, Mr. Anderson, publisher, Dumfries, and Mr. Fraser, publisher, Dalbeattie.]
T. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkins, Thomas (1810-1889)

​HAWKINS, THOMAS (1810–1889), geologist, son of John and Edith Hawkins, was born at Glastonbury on 25 July 1810. He studied anatomy at Guy's Hospital under Sir Astley Cooper, but very soon became interested in geology. In 1831 he was made a fellow of the Geological Society. He became widely known as a collector of fossils. A collection which he had procured in the lias of Devon, Somerset, and Dorset was purchased by the government for 3,000l. and placed in the British Museum. A strong memorial was presented without success in March 1839 in favour of a public grant for the purchase of a second collection which Hawkins had formed. Hawkins generously presented a number of fine specimens of saurian fossils from the south of England lias to the geological museums of Cambridge (1856) and Oxford (1874). He died in the Isle of Wight in October 1889.
Hawkins wrote: 1. ‘Memoirs of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri,’ twenty-eight plates, imp. fol., London, 1834. 2. ‘The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons,’ with thirty plates, copied from the Hawkins collection in the British Museum, London, imp. fol., 1840. 3. ‘The Lost Angel and the History of the Old Adamites, found written on the Pillars of Seth. A Poem,’ 4to, London, 1840. 4. ‘One Centenary of Sonnets, to her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria,’ royal 16mo, London, 1841. 5. ‘The Wars of Jehovah in Heaven, Earth, and Hell,’ with eleven engravings by John Martin, imp. 4to, London, 1844. 6. ‘Victorian Verses,’ imp. fol., 1848. 7. ‘Prometheus: a Lyrical Drama,’ 4to, London, 1850. 8. ‘The Christian,’ crown 8vo, London, 1853. 9. ‘Cicero's (supposed lost) Book on Glory,’ demy 4to. 10. ‘Contra Judæos, Gentiles, et Hæreticos;’ a tract (supposed) by St. Chrysostom, demy 4to. 11. ‘My Life and Works’ (only 1 vol. published), London, 1887, 8vo. Also various pamphlets between 1846 and 1850.
[Hawkins's Autobiography, in vol. i. of My Life and Works, 1887; catalogue of works in the same; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Times, 31 Oct. 1889.]
W. A. J. A.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkins, William (d.1637)

​HAWKINS, WILLIAM (d. 1637), poet, was probably born at Oakington, near Cambridge. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. 1622–3, and M.A. 1626. In the interval he became master of the free grammar school at Hadleigh, Suffolk, but gave up the post to become curate to the rector of Hadleigh, Dr. Thomas Goad (1576–1638) [q. v.], who admired his Latin verses. He died in 1637 probably of the plague then raging, and was buried at Hadleigh on 29 June of that year.
Hawkins was author of: 1. A lyrical drama entitled ‘Apollo Shroving’ (London, 1627), which was acted by the boys of Hadleigh school on Shrove Tuesday, 6 Feb. 1626–7, Joseph Beaumont (1616–1699) [q. v.] taking a prominent part. Some lines in the siren's song (act iii. sc. 6, ll. 10–15) may have been remembered by Milton when describing Eve visiting her fruits and flowers (Paradise Lost, bk. viii. ll. 40–7). 2. A volume of Latin verse entitled ‘Corolla varia … (Eclogæ tres Virgillanæ declinatæ … Nisus verberans et vapulans, decantatus per Musas virgiferas, juridicas),’ 3 pts. 8vo, Cambridge, 1634. A full analysis of this curious and clever volume is given in Pigot's ‘Hadleigh,’ pp. 179–85. 3. Verses in the Cambridge collections called ‘Rex redux,’ on the king's return from Scotland in 1633; ‘Carmen Natalitium,’ on the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, 1635; and ‘Σγνῴδια sive Musarum Cantabrigiensium concentus,’ &c., on the birth of the Princess Anne, 1637. 4. Latin elegies by him on Edward Gale, apothecary of Hadleigh, 1630, in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 15227, f. 63.
[Pigot's Hadleigh, 1860, pp. 176–86; Brydges's Restituta, iii. 236; Hunter's Chorus Vatum, vol. iv. (Addit. MS. 24490, f. 299).]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Freind, William (1669-1745)

​FREIND, WILLIAM (1669–1745), divine, brother to Robert Freind [q. v.] and John Freind [q. v.], was admitted king's scholar at Westminster in 1683, and was thence elected to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1687. He took the degree of B.A. in 1691, and of M.A. in 1694. In 1714 he succeeded Robert Freind as rector of Turvey, Bedfordshire, a living then in the gift of the Earl of Peterborough, and in 1720 he was instituted rector of the southern mediety of Woodford by Thrapston, Northamptonshire. He won a prize of 20,000l. in a lottery on 14 Feb. 1745, but in October 1742 he is described by Mrs. Pilkington as being a king's bench prisoner for debt, who officiated on Sundays in a chapel attached to the Marshalsea. Mrs. Pilkington says that he had ‘once lived in grandeur,’ and was ‘only undone by boundless generosity and hospitality.’ It is known that in 1720 he was associated with Alexander Denton, esq., in giving 200l. to the living of Biddlesden, Buckinghamshire, and with Archdeacon Franks in giving the same sum to the living of Ampthill, Bedfordshire, in order to enable them to obtain grants from Queen Anne's Bounty. His wife, too, who was buried at Burnham, Buckinghamshire, in 1721, is praised in an inscription in the church for her liberality to the poor. He is described in his father's epitaph at Croughton, Northamptonshire (which is proved by its contents to have been written between 1711 and 1728), as ‘lord of the manor of Hitcham, Bucks.’ This manor was certainly the property of John Freind in 1700 and 1728, so that possibly William Freind bought it from John and resold it after squandering his money. From the fact that John Freind by a will made in March 1727 left him 100l. a year, we may conjecture that he was already impecunious at that period. He died on 15 April 1745, whether in prison or not is not quite certain. Mrs. Pilkington wrote ‘death has released him,’ but Bishop Newton says ‘he would have died a prisoner in the Fleet if his old schoolfellow, the Earl of Winchilsea, when he was at the head of the admiralty, had not made him chaplain to a ship of one hundred guns.’ He was still rector of both Turvey and Woodford when he died. A mythical story seems to have grown up to the effect that he won two great lottery prizes, but his daughter Anne on her marriage to Bishop Smalridge's son is called (2 May 1730) ‘Miss Freind, daughter to him who got the great prize.’ He published ‘The Christian Minister absolutely necessary to be in every family, containing Rules and Instructions for the behaviour and conduct of a Christian,’ and about 1736 an advertisement appeared announcing the approaching publication of the first weekly number of ‘The Sacred Historian, or the History of the Old and New Testament methodically digested in a regular narrative, by the Rev. W. Freind, M.A., brother to the late famous Dr. Freind, the physician.’
E. C-n.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/French, George Russell

​FRENCH, GEORGE RUSSELL (1803–1881), antiquary, was born in London in 1803. After being privately educated he became an architect, and was for many years surveyor and architect to the Ironmongers' Company. French was an accomplished scholar, and devoted his leisure to antiquarian researches. He was long an active member of the council, and subsequently one of the vice-presidents, of the London and Middlesex Archæological Society. In 1841 French published an elaborate account of the ancestries of Queen Victoria and of the Prince Consort; and in 1847 his ‘Address delivered on the sixth anniversary of the College of the Freemasons of the Church.’ He next traced the royal descent of Nelson and Wellington from Edward I, king of England, and published in 1853 the tables of pedigree and genealogical memoirs in connection therewith. In 1861–9 he prepared and issued a ‘Catalogue of the Antiquities and Works of Art exhibited at Ironmongers' Hall.’ French published in two parts the result of a careful series of Shakespearean investigations, under the title of ‘Shakespeareana Genealogica’ (1869). The first part consisted of an identification of the dramatis personæ in Shakespeare's historical plays, from ‘King John’ to ‘King Henry VIII,’ accompanied with observations on characters in ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Hamlet,’ and notes on persons and places belonging to Warwickshire alluded to in several plays. The second part consisted of a dissertation on the Shakespeare and Arden families and their connections, with tables of descent. French, who was a temperance reformer, published in 1879 a work entitled ‘Temperance or Abstinence,’ in which he discussed the question from the scriptural point of view. French died in London on 1 Nov. 1881.
G. B. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Freind, William (1715-1766)

​FREIND, WILLIAM (1715–1766), dean of Canterbury, baptised in Westminster Abbey, 10 March 1714–15, was the son of Robert Freind (1667?–1754) [q. v.], head-master of Westminster School, by Jane, daughter of Samuel de L'Angle, prebendary of Westminster (Chester, Registers of Westminster Abbey, p. 80). Admitted on the foundation at Westminster in 1727, he was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1731, and matriculated 22 June of that year (B.A. 30 April 1735, M.A. 8 June 1738). A Latin ode from his pen on the death of Queen Caroline was printed in the Oxford collection of verses on that event in 1738. On 4 April 1739 he received institution to the valuable rectory of Witney, Oxfordshire, on the resignation of his father, whom he also succeeded as prebendary of Westminster, 17 Oct. 1744. In the last-named year he became one of the royal chaplains in ordinary. In 1747 he was appointed rector of Islip, Oxfordshire, and held that living along with Witney. He accumulated his degrees in divinity, 6 July 1748 (Oxford ​Graduates, 1851, p. 245). In 1755 he published 'A Sermon [on 1 Pet. ii. 16] preached before the House of Commons ... 30 Jan. 1755, being the day of the Martyrdom of King Charles I.' He resigned his prebend of Westminster on being promoted to a canonry of Christ Church in succession to David Gregory, 15 May 1756: and it is said to have been his unconditional surrender of this preferment which obtained for him the deanery of Canterbury, in which he was installed 14 June 1760. In the following year he was elected prolocutor of the lower house of convocation, in which capacity he delivered an elegant 'Concio ad Clerum' [on Galat. v. 1], published the same year. He died at Canterbury, 26 Nov. 1766 (Gent. Mag. xxxvi. 399), but was buried at Witney, and a short inscription to his memory placed upon the monument of his father and mother in that church. By his biographers Freind is described as a model of integrity, modesty, and benevolence. He is also said to have had a fine taste in music. He died extremely well off, having inherited the greater part of the fortune of his uncle, John Freind, M.D. (1675-1728) [q. v.] In April 1739 he married Grace, second daughter of William Robinson of Rokeby Park, Yorkshire, who died 28 Dec. 1776, and was also buried at Witney (Foster, Baronetage, 1882, p. 538). He left issue three sons, Robert, William Maximilian, and John, and a daughter, Elizabeth, married to Duncan Campbell, a captain in the marines. The youngest son, John Freind, or, as he afterwards became, Sir John Robinson, succeeded to the estates of his maternal uncle, Richard Robinson, baron Rokeby, archbishop of Armagh. Freind's valuable collection of books, pictures, and prints were sold by auction in 1767. He gave a bust of his father by Rysbrach to Christ Church Library. His own portrait has been engraved by Worlidge.
G. G.