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

​HENSHAW, THOMAS (1618–1700), scientific writer, son of Benjamin Henshaw, and brother of Nathaniel Henshaw [q. v.], was born in Milk Street, city of London, on 15 June 1618. After attending school at Barnet and then in Cripplegate, London, he was entered as commoner at University College, Oxford, in 1634, and remained there five years without taking a degree. He entered the Middle Temple, and on the commencement of the civil war joined Charles I at York. Soon afterwards he ‘went to London to recruit himself,’ and being taken prisoner by the parliamentarians, was allowed to pass out of the country on his giving good security not to join the king's army again. Henshaw sailed to Holland, and afterwards entered the French army, in which he became major. He subsequently travelled through Spain. Passing thence to Italy, he lived in succession at Rome, Padua, and Venice, till a ‘ little before the murther of King Charles I,’ when he got leave to return to England. In 1654 was printed at Spa a ‘Vindication of Thomas Henshaw, sometime Major in the French King's service, in justification of himself against the Aspersions throwne upon him.’ In this he repudiates any share in the plots on behalf of Charles II, but calls Cromwell ‘the greatest murtherer.’
On his return to England Henshaw was called to the bar, but discontinued the practice of the common law on account of ‘the sowre complexion of the times.’ After the Restoration Henshaw was appointed the king's under-secretary of the French tongue and gentleman of the privy council in ordinary. He was chosen one of the fellows of the Royal Society at its first constitution in 1663. Henshaw continued as French secretary under James II and William III (see inscription on his tombstone at Kensington). In 1672 Henshaw attended the Duke of Richmond, ambassador extraordinary to the court of Denmark, as secretary of the embassy and assistant to the duke. The latter died on 12 Dec. of the same year, and Henshaw was commanded to remain in Denmark as envoy extraordinary, and held the office for two years and a half.
Henshaw spent the last years of his life at his house in Kensington, where he died on 2 Jan. 1699–1700. According to his tombstone in the chancel of the parish church there, a daughter Anne, his sole survivor, married Thomas Halsey of Gaddesden, Hertfordshire.
Henshaw published, from the Italian of F. Alvarez Samedo, ‘History of the Great and Renowned Monarchy of China, to which is added a History of the late Invasion and ​Conquest of the flourishing Kingdom of the Tartars, with an exact account of the other Affairs of China,’ London, 1655. After the Restoration appeared several unimportant papers by him in the ‘Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,’ and two small treatises on making ‘Salt Peter’ and ‘Gunpowder.’ He edited with an epistle to the reader Dr. Stephen Skinner's ‘Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ,’ 1671, and is referred to in the preface to Elias Ashmole's ‘Way to Bliss’ (printed 1658) as an expert in the occult science of the time.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 794, iv. 444; books quoted above.]
R. E. A.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bigod, Francis

1904 Errata appended.
​BIGOD or BYGOD, Sir FRANCIS (1508–1637), rebel, of Settrington and Mulgrave Castle in Yorkshire, was descended from John, brother and heir of Roger Bigod, sixth earl of Norfolk. His grandfather, Sir Ralph Bigod, died in 1515, leaving Francis, then aged seven, his heir (Inq. p.m. 7 Hen. VIII, ​ Nos. 139, 144); for his father, John Bigod, had fallen in the Scotch wars. He had livery of lands by patent, 21 Dec. 1529 (Pat. 21 Hen. VIII, p. i., m. 28), soon afterwards knighted. He spent some time at Oxford, but took no degree, though his letters show that he was a scholar. In 1527 and the following years he was in the service of Cardinal Wolsey, and under Cromwell, Wolsey’s successor in the favour of Henry VIII, was engaged in advancing in Yorkshire the king’s reforms in church matters. Nevertheless in 1536 we find him implicated (though unwillingly) in the Pilgrimage for Grace, an insurrection produced by these reforms. In January 1537 he headed anunsuccessful rising at Beverley, and for this was hanged at Tyburn on 2 June 1537. By his wife Katharine, daughter of William, Lord Conyers, he left a son, Ralph, who was restored in blood by act of parliament, 3 Edward VI, but died without issue, and a daughter, Dorothy, through whom the estates passed to the family of Radclyffe. Rastell (the chronicler) in a letter to Cromwell, 17 Aug. [1534] (Cal. Of State Papers Hen. VIII, vol. viii. No. 1070), calls Bigod wise and well learned; and Bale describes him as ‘homo naturalium splendore nobilis ac doctus et evangelicæ veritatis amator.’ His letters to Cromwell, many of which are preserved in the Public Record Office, show him to have been deeply in debt. He wrote a treatise on ‘Impropriations,’ against the impropriation of parsonages by the monasteries (London, by Tho. Godfray cum privilegio regali, small 8vo). It appears to have been written after the birth of Elizabeth and before Anne Boleyn’s disgrace, i.e. between September 1533 and April 1536. Copies are in the British Museum and in Lambeth library, and the preface is reprinted at the end of Sir Henry Spelman’s ‘Larger work of Tithes’ (1647 edition). Bigod also translated some Latin works, and, during the insurrection, wrote against the royal supremacy.
[Calendar of State Papers, Henry VIII. vols. iv. and onwards; Tanner’s Bibliotheca; Bale; Fuller’s Worthies, ii. 209; Wood’s Athen. Oxon. i. 101; Wriothesley’s Chronicle, i. 64; Blomefield’s Norfolk, v. 228.]
R. H. B.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.27 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bigod, Hugh (d.1266)

​BIGOD, HUGH (d. 1266), the justiciar, was the younger son of Hugh Bigod, third earl of Norfolk. Nothing is known of his early life. In 39 Henry III he was made chief ranger of Farndale Forest, Yorkshire, in consideration of a payment of 500 marks, and in the next year became governor of the castle of Pickering. In 1257 he accompanied Henry in his expedition into Wales. In 1258, on the formation of the government under the Provisions of Oxford, of which his brother, Roger, d. 1270 [q. v.], earl of Norfolk and marshal of England, was a member, Bigod was named chief justiciar, and in that capacity had the custody of the Tower of London. He was likewise made governor of Dover Castle, but resigned that place in 1261. He must at this period have been very wealthy, for he paid 3,000l. for the wardship of William deKime, of Lincolnshire. His character as a judge has been placed high by Matthew Paris: ‘legum terræ peritum, qui officium justiciariæ strenue peragens nullatenus permittat jus regni vacillare.’ In 1259-60 he went with two of the principal judges on a circuit to administer justice throughout the kingdom. Soon after he became governor of Scarborough, and about the end of 1260 he resigned his office of justiciar, probably from dissatisfaction with the conduct of the barons. He afterwards, in 1263, joined the royal party, and was present on the king's side at the battle of Lewes on 14 May 1264, but fled from the field. He was afterwards reappointed to the government of Pickering Castle. He died about November 1266, leaving a son, Roger, who became in 1270 the fifth earl of Norfolk [q. v.] Bigod was twice married: first to Joanna, daughter of Robert Burnet; and secondly to Joanna, daughter of Nicholas de Stuteville and widow of Hugh Wake.
[Chronicles of Matthew Paris and Gervase of Canterbury (Rolls Ser.); Dugdale's Baronage, i. 135; Foss's Judges of England, ii. 239; Stubbs's Constitutional History.]
E. M. T.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bilfrith

​BILFRITH (fl. 750), anchorite of Lindisfarne, is referred to by Simeon of Durham as skilled in goldsmith's work, and as having, on that account, been employed by Æthelwold, bishop of Lindisfarne (724–40), to adorn with gold and gems the famous manuscript of the Gospels known as the 'Durham Book,' now in the Cottonian Library (Nero D. iv.) The entry made in the manuscript itself by the glossator Aldred in the tenth century, and recording the names of those who worked m its production, mentions Bilfith the anchorite as the one who 'wrought the smith's work the ornaments that are on the outside, and adorned it with gold and gems,' &c. Bilfriths name also appears among the 'nomina anchoritarum' in the 'Liber Vitæ' of the church of Durham (Cotton MS. Domitian A. vii.) His bones were removed to Durham, together with those of other saints, in the eleventh century.
[Simeon of Durham's Hist. Dunelm. Eccl., ed. Arnold (Rolls Series), vol. i. 1882, pp. 68, 88; Liber Vitæ Dunelm. (Surtees Soc.), 1841, p. 6, col. 2; Skeat, Gospel acc. to St. John in A.-Saxon and Northumbrian versions, 1878, p. viii; Cat. of Anct. MSS. in the Br. Museum, pt. ii. 1884, pp. 16, 82.]
E. M. T.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bill, Robert

​BILL, ROBERT (1754–1827), an ingenious mechanician and inventor, was descended from an old Staffordshire family, the Bills of Farley Hall, and was born in 1754. His father and uncle had married coheiresses, Dorothy and Mary, the daughters of Hall Walton, a near relative of Izaak Walton, from whom they inherited the freehold estate of Stanhope in Staffordshire. Bill was designed for the army, and therefore did not enter the university; but instead of following the military' profession he occupied himself with literary pursuits and experiments in ​ natural science. His ingenuity was first manifested in the invention of minor improvements in the details of domestic con- struction: he built his garden-walls on a plan fitted to increase the capability of the walls for retaining heat; he devised a new method of warming hothouses by means of iron cylinders; and introduced an ingenious contrivance for the heating of dwelling-houses. In a pamphlet 'On the Danger of a Paper Currency,' printed for private circulation in 1796, he incidentally and somewhat irrelevantly recommended the use of iron tanks for preserving water on shipboard, a plan which was afterwards followed with great benefit in the navy. On the introduction of gas for lighting houses and streets he joined one of the London companies, to whom he gave the advantage of his chemical and mechanical knowledge in erecting the apparatus and regulating its use; but he afterwards retired from the concern on account of some disagreement among the proprietors. He expended much time and money in promoting the introduction of Massey's logs for measuring a ship's way at sea, printing and circulating on this subject in 1806 'A short Account of Massey's Patent Log and Sounding Machine, with the opinions of certain captains in the navy, merchant service, and pilots who have made practical use or experimental trials with them.' He also exerted himself to promote the adoption of elastic springs in pianofortes, so as to keep them in tune for an indefinite time. In 1820 he took out a patent for making ship's masts of iron, but on trial they were not considered sufficiently strong, a defect he attributed to the fact that his instructions were not properly carried out. In his later years he was engaged in experiments for rendering inferior timber — such as elm, ash, beech, and poplar — harder and more durable than any other species of wood. He obtained permission from government to carry his experiment into practical effect in the construction of a ship at Deptford dockyard, but did not live to witness the result. He died on 23 Sept. 1827. By his marriage to Sarah Perks, the daughter of a solicitor, he left three daughters.
[Gent. Mag. xcvii. pt. ii. 466-8; Burke's History of the Landed Gentry, i. 128.]
T. F. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bigsby, John Jeremiah

​BIGSBY, JOHN JEREMIAH (1792–1881), geologist, born at Nottingham 14 Aug. 1792, was the son of Dr. John Bigsby. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1814, and published a 'Disputatio de vi arsenici vitiosa.' Soon afterwards he joined the army as a medical officer, and served at the Cape in 1817. In the following year he was sent to Canada, where he chiefly developed his interest in geology. In 1819 he was commissioned to report on the geology of Upper Canada, In 1822 he became British secretary and medical officer of the Canadian boundary commission. Five years later he returned to England, and practised medicine at Newark, Nottinghamshire. There he remained until 1846, when he permanently settled in London. He was elected a fellow of the Geological Society in 1823, and of the Royal Society in 1869. In 1874 the former society presented him with the Murchison medal. In 1877 he presented to the Geological Society a sum of money to provide for a gold medal to be called after him, and to be awarded biennially to students of American geology under forty-five years of age. He died at Gloucester Place, London, 10 Feb. 1881.
Bigsby was the author of: 1. 'A Lecture on Mendicity,' Worksop, 1836. 2. 'Seaside Manual of Invalids and Bathers,' 1841. 3. 'The Shoe and Canoe,' 1850; a narrative of travel in Canada. 4. 'Thesaurus Siluricus: the flora and fauna of the Silurian period, with addenda from recent acquisitions;' a very laborious compilation, published with the aid of a Royal Society grant in 1868. 5. 'Thesaurus Devonico-Carboniferus: the flora and fauna of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods,' 1878. Bigsby had nearly completed a 'Permian Thesaurus' at the time of his death. The Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers' (1800-73) gives the names of twenty-seven by Bigsby, almost all treating of American geology. His earliest paper, 'Remarks on the Environs of Carthage Bridge, near the mouth of the Genesee River,' appeared in Silliman's 'American Journal' for 1820. His later papers were contributed to the 'Geological Society's Transactions,' to the 'Philosophical Magazine,' and to the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History.'
[Memoir by Mr. Robert Etheridge, F.R.S., in Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, xxxvii. 41; Cat. of Scientific Papers, vols. i. vii.; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Frankland, Thomas (1633-1690)

​FRANKLAND, THOMAS (1633–1690), impostor and annalist, was born in Lancashire in 1633. He was entered in May 1649 at Brasenose College, Oxford, and became a fellow in 1654. He proceeded to the M.A. degree on 28 June 1655, and in 1662 was proctor of the university. He took orders after his grace had been three times refused, but renounced them in order to practise medicine. He settled in London and passed as M.D., alleging when asked for particulars by members of either university that he had taken his degree at the other. He applied for admission to the Royal College of Physicians, producing a certificate to attest that the M.D. degree had been conferred on him at Oxford, 10 Oct. 1667. He was admitted a candidate of the college in December 1671, and on 29 July 1675 became a fellow. At a general election he was appointed junior censor of the college. His overbearing conduct in this office made him much disliked, especially by the juniors, some of whom caused a search to be made in the registers of Oxford University. The officers of the university certified by an instrument dated 15 Nov. 1677 that no record of his degree could be found. Frankland showed that he held the Cambridge M.D. degree, but it was proved that this had been obtained merely on the strength of his pretended Oxford degree, he having been admitted at Cambridge on 28 Feb. 1676 ‘to the same degree’ as he held from Oxford. Other charges of receiving bribes for shielding empirics were brought against him. He was disqualified for membership of the College of Physicians, but his formal ejectment does not appear to have taken place before 26 June 1682, Wood says by the connivance of the senior members. Compelled to abandon medicine, Frankland had turned his undeniable talents to historical study, and in 1681 published anonymously ‘The Annals of King James I and King Charles I,’ a folio volume of 913 pages besides preface and index. This book is largely made up of speeches in parliament and documents of state. Frankland has also been credited with the authorship of ‘The Honours of the Lords Spiritual asserted, and their privileges to Vote in Capital Cases in Parliament maintained by Reason and Precedent,’ folio, 1679. According to Wood, Frankland forged a will as well as his doctor's certificate. His name occurs as the recipient of 800l. secret service money in 1689. His misdoings brought him to the Fleet prison, where he died in 1690, and was buried in the church of St. Vedast, Foster Lane.
A. V.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Franklin, Eleanor Anne

​FRANKLIN, ELEANOR ANNE (1797?–1825), poetess, first wife of John (afterwards Sir John) Franklin [q. v.], was daughter of William Porden, an architect of some eminence, and one of a line of architects. She early developed a taste for poetry and art, and while still a girl published ‘The Veils, or the Triumph of Constancy, a poem in 6 Books’ (8vo, 1815). A short poem on the Arctic expedition (8vo, 1818), and a visit to the Trent, then just come home, brought her the acquaintance of John Franklin. The acquaintance was renewed on Franklin's return from his first journey through Arctic America, and on 19 Aug. 1823 she became his wife. She had previously published another and more ambitious work, ‘Cœur=de Lion, an Epic poem in 16 cantos’ (2 vols. 8vo, 1822). On her marriage there was, we are told, a distinct understanding that she would ‘never, under any circumstances, seek to turn her husband aside from the duty he owed to his country and his profession’ (A Brave Man, p. 18), a promise that she held even to the death. On 3 June 1824 she gave birth ​to a daughter; she seems never to have recovered her health, fell into a decline, and died on 22 Feb. 1825, six days after her husband had left England on his second journey through North America. Mrs. Franklin's poetry obtained in its day a certain social success, but it has none of the elements of vitality, and is now quite forgotten. Her versification is, however, smooth, and shows a delicate and cultivated mind. During her girlhood and short married life she gathered round her a pleasant society of men distinguished in art, literature, or science, and her correspondence not infrequently occurs in the memoirs of that time. She was always keen in the pursuit of knowledge and bright in conversation, but was qualified to retort one day at the Royal Institution, when she heard some one suggest that ‘the young ladies had far better stay at home and make a pudding,’ ‘We did that before we came out.’ A portrait is in the possession of the Gell family.
[A Brave Man and his Belongings (by one of Mrs. Franklin's nieces: printed for private circulation in 1874); Gent. Mag. 1825, i. 470–1.]
J. K. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Frankland, Jocosa

​FRANKLAND, JOCOSA or JOYCE (1531–1587), philanthropist, the daughter of Robert Trappes, a citizen and goldsmith of London, by his wife Joan, was born in London in 1531. She married, first Henry Saxey, a 'merchant venturer,' and afterwards William (?) Frankland of Rye House, Hertfordshire, whom also she outlived. By her first husband she had an only son, William Saxey, a student of Gray's Inn, to whom she was greatly attached, and who died at Rye House 22 Aug. 1581, aged 23. Conjointly with him she had founded junior fellowships and scholarships at Caius and Emmanuel Colleges, Cambridge, and after his death and that of her second husband, who was per​haps unsympathetic, she determined to devote her wealth to educational endowments, as the most congenial tribute to the memory of her son. At Newport Ponds, Essex, she founded a free school. To Lincoln College, Oxford, she gave 3l. a year in augmentation of four scholarships founded by her mother, Joan Trappes, and to Brasenose College she left by her will, dated 20 Feb. 1586, both land and houses for the increase of the emoluments of the principal and fellows, and for the foundation of an additional fellowship, the holder of which was to be by preference a member of either the Trappes or Saxey families. She also provided maintenance for four scholars and a yearly stipend for an under-reader in logic and for a bible-clerk. In recognition of Jocosa Frankland's generosity her name was included in the grace after meat repeated daily in the college hall; and after her death, which occurred at Aldermanbury, London, 1587, the principals and fellows of Brasenose erected a monument to her memory in the church of St. Leonard's, Foster Lane, where she was buried. In the same church, which was destroyed in the fire of London, her father's tomb bore the too depreciatory epitaph:
When the bells be merely [merrily] rung  And the Masse devoutly sung  And the meate merely eaten,  Then shall Robert Trappis, his wyffe, and his children be forgotten.
In the hall of Brasenose College is a portrait of Jocosa Frankland with some Latin verses inscribed, commencing:
Trapsi nata fui, Saxy sponsata marito,  Gulielmo mater visa beata meo.  Mors matura patrem, sors abstulit atra maritum;  Filius heu rapida morte peremptus obit.
The existence of the husband Frankland is throughout ignored. The portrait was engraved by Fittler. Another portrait is in the master's gallery in the Combination Room at Caius College, Cambridge.
A. V.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Berriman, John

​BERRIMAN, JOHN (1691–1768), divine, born in 1691, was the son of John Berriman, a London apothecary, and thus brother of William Berriman, D.D. [q. v.] He was a member of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he matriculated 11 May 1714, proceeding B.A. 1718, and M.A. 1720, was for many years rector of St. Olave's and St. Alban's. He published in 1722 a sermon (on Kings xxi. 12–13) entitled ‘The Case of Naboth considered and compared with that of the Royal Martyr,’ 4to. This was followed in 1741 by ‘Θεός ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκὶ, or a critical dissertation on 1 Tim. iii. 16. Wherein rules are laid down to distinguish in various readings which is genuine. … Being the substance of eight sermons preached at the Lady Moyer's lecture in 1737–8,’ 8vo. In 1751 he edited his brother William Berriman's ‘Christian Doctrines explained in Forty Sermons,’ 8vo, and in 1758 he wrote a preface to C. Wheatley's ‘Fifty Sermons.’ He died in 1768.
[Gent. Mag. xxxviii. 590; Rawlinson MSS., fo. 16182, Bodleian Library; British Museum Catalogue.]
A. H. B.