OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wright, Thomas (1792-1849)

​WRIGHT, THOMAS (1792–1849), engraver and portrait-painter, was born at Birmingham on 2 March 1792. After serving an apprenticeship with Henry Meyer [q. v.] he worked for four years as assistant to William Thomas Fry [q. v.], for whom he engraved the popular plate of Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold in a box at Covent Garden Theatre. About 1817 he began to practise independently as a stipple-engraver, and also found employment in taking portraits in pencil and miniature. Wright became much associated with George Dawe [q. v.], whose sister he married, and in 1822 followed him to St. Petersburg to engrave his gallery of portraits of Russian generals; there he also executed a fine plate of the Emperor Alexander, and another of the Empress Alexandra with her children, both after Dawe, on account of which he received diamond rings from members of the royal family and a gold medal from the king of Prussia. Wright returned to England in 1826, and during the next four years was employed upon the plates to Mrs. Jameson's ‘Beauties of the Court of Charles II,’ which constitute his best work; also upon some of the plates to the folio edition of Lodge's ‘Portraits.’ In 1830 he again went to Russia, and remained for fifteen years, working under the patronage of the court. There he published a series of portraits entitled ‘Les Contemporains Russes,’ drawn and engraved by himself. On finally leaving St. Petersburg Wright presented a complete collection of impressions from his plates, numbering about 300, to the Hermitage Gallery. He died in George Street, Hanover Square, London, on 30 March 1849. He was a member of the academies of St. Petersburg, Florence, and Stockholm.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Gent. Mag. 1849, ii. 211; Athenæum, 1849.]
F. M. O'D.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sykes, Arthur Ashley

​SYKES, ARTHUR ASHLEY (1684?–1756), latitudinarian divine, son of Arthur Sykes of Ardeley, near Stevenage, Hertfordshire, was born in London about 1684. He was educated at St. Paul's school, whence he went with an exhibition to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was admitted on 15 April 1701, and in the following year was elected to a scholarship. He graduated B.A. in 1705, M.A. in 1708, and D.D. in 1726.
On 7 Feb. 1713 he was presented by Archbishop Tenison to the vicarage of Godmersham, Kent, which he resigned in 1714, and on 12 April 1714 to the rectory of Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire. While at Dry Drayton, which was near Cambridge, Sykes took an active interest in the affairs of the university, and was a vigorous partisan of Bentley in his controversy with Conyers Middleton. He resigned Dry Drayton in 1718, on being presented (in November of that year) to the rectory of Rayleigh in Essex, where he remained till his death. In December 1718 he was appointed to the afternoon preachership at King Street Chapel, Golden Square (a chapel-of-ease to St. James's, Westminster, ​of which his friend, Dr. Clarke, was rector), and in 1721 to the morning preachership there. In January 1724 Sykes was made prebendary of Alton Borealis in the cathedral church of Salisbury, of which in 1727 he became precentor, and in April 1725 he was appointed assistant preacher at St. James's, Westminster. His other preferments were the deanery of St. Burien, Cornwall, in February 1739, and a prebendal stall at Winchester, through the favour of Bishop Hoadly, on 15 Oct. 1740. Sykes died from paralysis, at his house in Cavendish Square, London, on 23 Nov. 1756, and was buried on the 30th in St. James's Church, Westminster. He married Mrs. Elizabeth Williams, a widow of Bristol, but left no children. She died in 1763. The bulk of his fortune, which was considerable, Sykes left to her for life, with remainder to his brother George, who succeeded him in the rectory of Rayleigh. In 1766 the latter left by will the sum of 1,000l. to the master and fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in trust for the foundation of four exhibitions (now consolidated into one) for scholars from St. Paul's school. A portrait of him was painted by Wills.
Sykes was a voluminous controversial writer of the school of Hoadly. The catalogue of his works, chiefly pamphlets, prefixed to Disney's ‘Memoirs’ of him, fills fourteen octavo pages, and there are over eighty entries in his name in the ‘British Museum Catalogue.’ ‘His whole life,’ writes a critic in the ‘Monthly Review,’ ‘was a warfare of the pen, first in the Bangorian controversy, next in the Arian, then in the dispute about Phlegon, and afterwards in the Inquiry concerning the Demoniacs.’ He naturally incurred the resentment of Warburton, and, as Lowth puts it, was whipped by him at the cart's tail, in the notes to the ‘Divine Legation,’ ‘the ordinary place of his literary executions.’ One of his pieces, ‘An Essay on the Nature, Design, and Origin of Sacrifices,’ 1748, was translated by Semler into German, 1778.
J. H. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sydserff, Thomas

​SYDSERFF, THOMAS (1581–1663), bishop of Galloway, born in 1581, was the eldest son of James Sydserff, merchant, Edinburgh. He was educated at Edinburgh University, and graduated M.A. on 22 Feb. 1602. His first charge was St. Giles, Edinburgh, to which he was admitted on 30 May 1611; but when the city was reconstituted ecclesiastically in 1626 he was translated to Trinity College church. He was present at the meeting of bishops and other ministers held at Holyrood on 30 June 1633 to discuss the introduction of the English prayer-book. Sydserff strongly advocated the measure, and in 1634 was made dean of Edinburgh. In that year he was removed to the new or high church, Edinburgh. This position he held for a few months only, for on the recommendation of Archbishop Laud he was promoted to the bishopric of Brechin, and consecrated on 29 July 1634. On 21 Oct. 1634 he was admitted burgess of Dundee ‘for his services to the Commonweal,’ and on the same day was nominated a member of the court of high commission. He exercised his powers with some rigour, and in 1637 had high words with Lord Lorne in consequence of sentencing one of his followers to fine and imprisonment. His appointment to the see of Galloway was signed by Charles I on 30 Aug. 1635, and he was installed in November following. The active part which he took in the establishment of prelacy and his intimacy with Laud made him a mark for the violence of the presbyterians. His efforts to introduce the service-book made him extremely unpopular. At Stirling in February 1638 he was attacked by a presbyterian mob, and only through the intervention of the magistrates escaped severe injury. A few days afterwards he was thrice assaulted in the streets of Falkirk, Dalkeith, and Edinburgh. On 13 Dec. 1638 he was formally deposed and excommunicated by the general assembly. After his deposition Sydserff joined Charles I, and was with him at the camp at Newcastle in 1645. The overthrow of the royalists necessitated his retirement into private life, and he remained in seclusion until after the Restoration. When episcopacy was re-established in Scotland he was promoted to the bishopric of Orkney in 1661, being the only survivor of the bishops deposed in 1638. He died at Edinburgh on 29 Sept. 1663. He married, on 27 April 1614, Rachel, daughter of John Byers, an Edinburgh magistrate. By her he had four sons and four daughters. One of the sons was Thomas Sydserff, a popular dramatist, and the compiler of ‘Mercurius Caledonius,’ the first newspaper printed in Scotland. Keith describes the bishop as ‘a learned and worthy prelate,’ and Bishop Burnet alludes to him (under the name of ‘Saintserf’) in complimentary terms in his ‘History of his own Time.’ His name appears several times in the presbyterian lampoons of the period (see Maidment, Book of Scottish Pasquils).
A. H. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sydenham, John

​SYDENHAM, JOHN (1807–1846), antiquary, eldest son of John Sydenham, a bookseller of Poole, Dorset, was born in that town on 25 Sept. 1807. He was educated in his native town, and in 1829 became editor of the ‘Dorset County Chronicle.’ In 1839 he published ‘The History of the Town and County of Poole’ (Poole, 8vo), a work of considerable research and arranged with great clearness. In 1841 he wrote ‘Baal Durotrigensis’ (London, 8vo), a dissertation on an ancient colossal figure at Cerne in Dorset, in which he endeavoured to discriminate between the primal Celtæ and the later Celto-Belgæ, who emigrated from Gaul. In the following year Sydenham left the ‘Dorset Chronicle’ and became editor of ‘The West Kent Guardian,’ a Greenwich paper. In January 1846 he returned to Poole and started ‘The Poole and Dorsetshire Herald,’ of which he was editor and part-proprietor. Within a year, however, he died at Poole on 1 Dec. 1846. He married, in 1833, a daughter of William Zillwood, a schoolmaster of Dorchester, by whom he had six children. He was ‘one of the first members’ of the British Archæological Association.
[Private information kindly given by Mr. John Zillwood Sydenham; Gent. Mag. 1847, i. 211; Journal of the British Archæological Association, iii. 139; Mayo's Bibliotheca Dorsetiensis, pp. 127, 187.]
E. I. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sykes, Godfrey

​SYKES, GODFREY (1825–1866), decorative artist, born at Malton, Yorkshire, in 1825, received his training in the government school of art at Sheffield, to the headmastership of which he succeeded. While at Sheffield he at first painted pictures of rolling-mills, smiths' shops, &c.; but, coming under the influence of Alfred Stevens [q. v.], he developed a remarkable talent for decorative work, and in 1861 was invited to London to assist Captain Francis Fowke [q. v.] on the buildings connected with the horticultural gardens then in course of formation. Some of the arcades were entrusted to him, and to his successful treatment of them with terra-cotta the subsequent popularity of that material was largely due. The new buildings for the South Kensington Museum gave further scope for the exercise of Sykes's powers, and upon the decoration of these he was engaged until his death. His most admired work at the museum is the series of terra-cotta columns which he modelled for the lecture theatre. Of these a set of photographs was published in 1866. His designs for the majolica decorations of the refreshment-rooms he did not live to complete. Some of his general schemes for the decoration of the museum were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1862 and 1864. Sykes's style, while based upon the study of Raphael and Michael Angelo, was thoroughly individual, and characterised by a fine taste and sense of proportion. He died at Old Brompton, London, on 28 Feb. 1866, and was buried in the Brompton cemetery. A watercolour drawing of a smith's shop by Sykes is in the South Kensington Museum. At the request of Thackeray he designed the well-known cover of the ‘Cornhill Magazine.’
F. M. O'D.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sykes, Mark Masterman

​SYKES, Sir MARK MASTERMAN (1771–1823), book-collector, born on 20 Aug. 1771, was eldest son of Sir Christopher Sykes (1749–1801), second baronet, of Sledmere, Yorkshire, by his wife Elizabeth (d. 1803), daughter of William Tatton of Withenshaw, Cheshire. Mark matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, on 10 May 1788. In 1795 he served the office of high sheriff of the county of York, and in September 1801 succeeded by the death of his father to the baronetcy and estates. On 14 May 1807 he was returned member of parliament for the city of York, and retained his seat till 1820, when he retired on account of ill-health. ​Sir Mark was famous as a bibliophile, and possessed one of the finest private libraries in England. It was especially rich in first editions of the classics, specimens of fifteenth-century printing, and in volumes of Elizabethan poetry. There were also some valuable manuscripts, including a copy of Dugdale's ‘Heraldic Visitation of York, 1665–1666.’ His chief treasure, however, was a copy of the first edition of Livy, by Sweynheim and Pannartz, published at Rome in 1469. It is the only copy on vellum extant, and some time after Sir Mark's death passed into the hands of Thomas Grenville (1755–1846) [q. v.], with the rest of whose library it was bequeathed to the British Museum. A catalogue of Sykes's library was prepared by Henry John Todd [q. v.] Sykes was a member of the Roxburghe Club, to which he presented a reprint of some of Lydgate's poems in 1818. He had also a fine collection of pictures, bronzes, coins, medals, and prints. The last included a complete set of Francesco Bartolozzi's engravings, comprising his proofs and etchings, which cost Sykes nearly 5,000l. He died without issue at Weymouth on 16 Feb. 1823, and was succeeded by his brother, Sir Tatton Sykes [q. v.] All his collections were dispersed by sale in 1824. His library fetched nearly 10,000l., and his pictures nearly 6,000l.
Sykes was twice married: first, on 11 Nov. 1795, to Henrietta, daughter and heiress of Henry Masterman of Settrington, Yorkshire, on which occasion he took the additional name of Masterman; she died in July 1813. On 2 Aug. 1814 he married, secondly, Mary Elizabeth, daughter of William Tatton Egerton and sister of Wilbraham Tatton Egerton of Tatton Park; she survived him, dying in October 1846.
E. I. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macaulay, James Buchanan

​MACAULAY, Sir JAMES BUCHANAN (1793–1859), Canadian judge, born at Niagara, Ontario, Canada, 3 Dec. 1793, was second son of James Macaulay, M.D., who went with the queen's rangers to Canada in 1792, and was afterwards inspector-general of hospitals. James served as an ensign in the 98th regiment. In 1812 he joined the Glengarry fencibles as a lieutenant, and fought during the war with America at Ogdensburg, Oswego, Lundy's Lane, and at the siege of Fort Erie. At the close of the war in 1815 his corps was disbanded, and after studying law he was admitted to the Canadian bar in 1822. He rose rapidly in his profession, and was an executive councillor during the administration of Sir Peregrine Maitland [q. v.] He was first appointed temporary judge of the court of queen's bench, and permanent judge in 1829. On the first establishment of the court of common pleas in December 1849 he was made the chief justice, and continued to preside there until his retirement on a pension in 1856, but afterwards became judge of the court of error and appeal. As chairman of the commission appointed to revise and consolidate the statutes of Canada and Upper Canada, Macaulay helped to reduce the whole statutory law of the country from its conquest to his own time into three volumes, a work of great labour and corresponding value, which he just lived to see completed. He was gazetted C.B. 30 Nov. 1858, and knighted by patent 13 Jan. 1859. He died at Toronto, 26 Nov. 1859. His wife, whom he married in 1821, was Rachel Crookshank, daughter of John Gamble, M.D., surgeon in the queen's rangers. She died 17 July 1883, aged 83.
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macbean, Alexander

1904 Errata appended.
​MACBEAN, ALEXANDER (d. 1784), one of the six amanuenses whom Johnson employed on the ‘Dictionary,’ was previously employed in a like capacity by Ephraim Chambers [q. v.] About 1758 he obtained, through the doctor's interest, the post of librarian to Archibald Campbell, third duke of Argyll [q. v.] When, on that nobleman's death in 1761, he was left ‘without a shilling,’ he became mainly dependent upon charity. Johnson, who praised his learning and faculty for languages, but described his ‘ignorance of life’ as complete, subsequently advised him to write a geographical dictionary, and wrote a preface for his ‘Dictionary of Ancient Geography’ when it appeared in 1773. The book was well conceived, but Johnson confessed to Madame d'Arblay it destroyed his hopes of Macbean doing anything properly ‘when he found he had given as much labour to Capua as to Rome’ (D'Arblay, Diary, i. 114). Two years later, when Macbean was starving, as his former colleague, Peyton, had already done, Johnson gave him four guineas and collected more (Piozzi, Letters, i. 218), and in 1780, through his influence with Lord Thurlow, obtained him admission as a poor brother to the Charterhouse. There he died on 26 June 1784, removing, Johnson lamented, ‘a screen between him and death’ (cf. Swift, Works, 1803, xi. 246). Johnson said of him: ‘He was very pious; he was very innocent; he did no ill, and of doing good a continual tenour of distress allowed him few opportunities.’
Besides the ‘Dictionary of Ancient Geography’ Macbean published, in 1743, ‘A Synopsis or short Analytical View of Chemistry, translated from the high Dutch of Dr. Godfrey Rothen,’ and in 1779 he compiled ‘A Dictionary of the Bible,’ which Horne describes as ‘a useful book in its day, though now completely superseded’ (Bibl. Bib.) He also compiled numerous indexes, among others that to Johnson's edition of the ‘English Poets’ (Nichols, Lit. Anecd., v. 30).
[Piozzi's Letters, ii. 373; Boswell's Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, i. 187, ii. 379, iii. 440; Moore's Memoirs, 1853, i. 94; Gent. Mag. 1785, i. 413; Allibone's Dictionary, p. 1161; Darling's Cycl. Bibl.; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
T. S.
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# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macaulay, Aulay

​MACAULAY, AULAY (1758–1819), miscellaneous writer, born in 1758, was the eldest son of John Macaulay, by his second wife. Zachary Macaulay [q. v.] was his brother and Lord Macaulay his nephew. He graduated M.A. at Glasgow in 1778, and while in residence there contributed to ‘Ruddiman's Magazine,’ under the signature ‘Academicus.’ After acting for three years as tutor to the sons of Mr. J. F. Barham at Bedford, he took holy orders, and obtained a curacy at Claybrooke, Leicestershire. He remained there until 1789, when he became rector of Frolesworth, but resigned that living in 1790. He had been admitted in 1785 at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, but his name does not appear in the ‘Graduati Cantabrigienses.’ In 1793 he went on a tour ​in Holland and Belgium, an account of which he wrote for the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1793–4; and next year, as travelling tutor to a son of Sir W. Farquhar, he visited the court of the Duke of Brunswick, and gave English lessons to his daughter, afterwards Queen Caroline, gaining the sincere regard of her mother, the Duchess. In 1796, after his return, Macaulay was presented by his brother-in-law, Thomas Babington, M.P. for Leicester, to the living of Rothley. In 1815 he made another tour on the continent (Gent. Mag. 1815–17), and four years later, on 24 Feb. 1819, died of apoplexy, leaving a widow (daughter of John Heyrick, the ‘venerable town clerk of Leicester’ from 1764 to 1791) and eight sons. He was for many years engaged upon a life of Melancthon, but never sent it to press, and had also meditated an editio expurgata of Pope. For Nichols's ‘History of Leicestershire’ he wrote ‘The History and Antiquities of Claybrooke, in the County of Leicester, including the Chapelries of Wibtoft, Little Wigston, and the Hamlets of Bittesby and Ullesthorpe,’ and transcribed an original history of the family of Fielding in the library of Nuneham. He must be distinguished from Aulay Macaulay (1673–1758), father of Kenneth Macaulay [q. v.]
Macaulay also published, besides three separate sermons:
* ‘Essays on various Subjects of Taste and Criticism,’ 1780.
* ‘Two Discourses on Sovereign Power and Liberty of Conscience, translated from the Latin of Professor Noodt of Leyden, with Notes and Illustrations,’ 1781.
His second son, Colin Campbell Macaulay (1799–1853), was educated at Rugby, travelled in Portugal, and in 1831 became partner in a firm of solicitors at Leicester. He was president of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1847, and again in 1848, and made several valuable contributions to their transactions, including historical papers on Cardinal Wolsey (1849), the Duke of Marlborough (1850), and Queen Elizabeth (1851). He died on 20 Oct. 1853 at Knighton Lodge, Leicester, and was buried at Rothley. By his wife Mary Kendall, eldest daughter of Richard Warner Wood, he left a son and a daughter.
[Gent. Mag. 1819, pt. i. pp. 276–7; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 82–6, and Lit. Illustr. iii. 752; Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, i. 8, ii. 435.]
G. Le G. N.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macaulay, Kenneth

1904 Errata appended.
​MACAULAY, KENNETH (1723–1779), alleged author of a ‘History of St. Kilda,’ was the third son of Aulay Macaulay (1673–1758), minister of Harris in the Hebrides, by Margaret Morison. He was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, where he graduated M.A. on 1 April 1742. On 15 Nov. 1749 he was appointed missionary to Lochaber, but declined it, and on 20 Nov. 1751 he was ordained as assistant and successor to his father, whom he succeeded as sole pastor in 1750. ​In 1761 he was presented by Archibald, duke of Argyll, to the parish of Ardnamurchan, Argyllshire, and was admitted there on 15 July. On 10 Oct. 1772 he was translated to Braaven, now known as Calder or Cawdor.
Macaulay was sent by the kirk on a special mission to St. Kilda in 1759, and published as his own composition in 1764 ‘History of St. Kilda, containing a Description of this Remarkable Island, the Manners and Customs of its Inhabitants, the Religious and Pagan Antiquities there found, with many other curious and interesting particulars.’ The volume was shown to Dr. Johnson by Boswell previous to his visit to the Hebrides in 1773. Johnson pronounced it ‘very well written, except some foppery about liberty and slavery.’ With Boswell he visited Macaulay on his journey to the Hebrides, and from conversation with him came to the conclusion that he could not have written the book. ‘There is,’ he said, ‘a combination in it of which Macaulay is not capable.’ Johnson may have been partly influenced in his opinion by a discussion he had on the English clergy with Macaulay, who was by no means respectful towards episcopal claims. Johnson pronounced him a ‘bigot to laxness.’ Boswell was told that the book had been written by Dr. John Macpherson of Skye from materials supplied by Macaulay, and this is confirmed by Croker.
Macaulay died on 2 March 1779, in his fifty-sixth year. By his wife, Penelope Macleod, whom he married on 4 Aug. 1758, he had a son Niel, who became a missionary minister at Harris.
[Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. iii. 81, 138, 249; Boswell's Life of Johnson, and Tour in the Hebrides.]
T. F. H.
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