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

​AVERY, BENJAMIN, LL.D. (d 1764), physician, was originally a presbyterian minister at Bartholomew Close, London, but quitted the ministry in 1720, in consequence of the Salters' Hall controversy on subscription, 1719, He practised as a physician, and was treasurer of Guy's Hospital. He retained the confidence of his presbyterian brethren, and acted for several years as secretary to the dissenting deputies, organised 1732, for the protection of the rights and redress of the grievances of the three denominations. He also rendered important services to political and theological liberalism by contributing to the 'Occasional Papers,' collected in three volumes, 1716-19, sometimes called the 'Bagweell' papers, from a word formed ​by the initials of their authors' surnames (Simon Browne, Avery, B. Grosvenor, D.D., Sam Wright, D.D., John Evans, D.D., Jabez Earle, D.D., Moses Lowman, Nathaniel Lardner; see Monthly Repos., 1813, p. 443. Lowndes, under 'Occasional Papers,' erroneously gives Barnes for Browne, Eames for Earle, and omits Lardner), and not to be confounded with the 'Occasional Paper,' 1697-8, by Bishop Willis. Avery also conducted the 'Old Whig, or Consistent Protestant,' a weekly publication, 13 March 1735 to 13 March 1738, his chief coadjutors being G. Benson, S. Chandler, B. Grosvenor, C. Fleming, J. Foster, and M. Towgood; the collected issue, in two volumes, 1739, is not complete. In 1728 Avery edited James Peirce's posthumous sermons and 'Scripture Catechism;' he was probably the author of the Latin inscription prepared for Peirce's tomb. He was not concerned in the 'Independent Whig,' 20 Jan. 1720 to 4 Jan. 1721, edited by Thomas Gordon (reissued 1732-5 and 1743). He was a trustee of Dr. Williams's Library, 1728-64, and his portrait hangs in the library. He died 23 July 1764.
Evans's List, Dr. Williams's Library; Bohn's Lowndes, 1864, pp. 1714, 2892; Turner's Lives of Eminent Unitarians, 1840, i. 207; Christian Reformer, 1848, p. 162; Inquirer, 29 June 1878.]
A. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Aylesbury, Thomas (fl.1622-1659)

​AYLESBURY, THOMAS (fl. 1622–1659), theologian, was educated at Cambridge, where he took the degrees of M.A. and B.D. By incorporation he was granted similar degrees at Oxford, the first on 9 July 1622, and the second on 10 July 1626. He was the author of: 1. 'Sermon preached on Paul's Cross, June 1622, on Luke xvii. 37,' London, 1623. 2. 'Paganisme and Papisme parallel'd and set forth in a Sermon at the Temple Church upon the Feast Day of All Saints, 1623, by Thomas Ailesbury, Student in Diuinite' (dedicated to the Earl of Southampton). 3. 'Treatise of the Confession of Sin, with the Power of the Keys,' 1657. 4. 'Diatribæ de æterno divini beneplaciti circa creaturas intellectuales decreto, ubi patrum consulta, scholasticorum scita et modernorum placita ad Sacræ Scripturae amussim et orthodoxæ ecclesiæ tribunal deferuntur,' Cambridge, 1659, and republished (according to Watt) in 1661. This work, which, like all Aylesbury's writings, was of a strongly Calvinistic character, was dedicated to the protestant churches of Europe.
S. L. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Banks, William Stott

​BANKS, WILLIAM STOTT (1820–1872), antiquary, was born at Wakefield, Yorkshire, in March 1820, of humble parentage. He received a scanty education at the Lancasterian school in that town, and at the age of eleven started life as office-boy to Mr. John Berry, a local solicitor. He was afterwards clerk in the office of Messrs. Marsden & Ianson, solicitors and clerks to the West Riding justices, and upon the dissolution of the firm in 1844 he remained with Mr. Ianson, to whom he subsequently articled himself. After the usual interval Banks was admitted an attorney in Hilary Term, 1851, and in 1853 became a partner, the firm being Messrs. Ianson & Banks. On the formation of the Wakefield Borough Commission in March 1870 he was elected clerk to the justices, an office which he retained until his death. He had, in 1865, become known as an author by the publication of his 'List of Provincial Words in use at Wakefield,' an unpretending little volume, but a model of its kind. The following year he gave to the world the first of his excellent manuals, entitled 'Walks in Yorkshire: I. In the Northwest; II. In the North-east,' which had previously appeared in weekly instalments in the columns of the 'Wakefield Free Press.' Shortly before his death he issued a companion volume, called 'Walks in Yorkshire: Wakefield and its neighbourhood.' Both works are remarkable for their completeness and happy research. Banks died at his house in Northgate, Wakefield, on the Christmas day of 1872, having returned but a few weeks from the continent, whither he had journeyed in a vain search for health.
[Wakefield Free Press, 28 Dec. 1872, and 18 Jan. 1873; Notes and Queries, 4th series, xi. 132; Yorkshire Archseological and Topographical Journal, ii. 459-60.]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bannard, John

​BANNARD, JOHN (fl. 1412), Augustinian friar at Oxford, is mentioned in Anthony à Wood's account of the Oxford members of this fraternity. According to Wood he flourished about 1412, and is stated to have been professor of theology, and afterwards chancellor of the university. Wood professes to have collected the materials for his short notice of Bannard from some manuscript fragments extant in his time in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which formerly belonged to the library of Exeter Cathedral. Tanner adds that in the same college library (MS. cxvi.) there is a treatise directed against the views entertained by John Bannard, the Augustinian, on the question of the Immaculate Conception; but no mention of this author is to be found in Mr. Coxe's catalogue of the Oxford college manuscripts. According to Wood, Bannard's chief work was entitled ‘Eruditæ Quæstiones in Magistrum Sententiarum;’ and he adds that this production created such a stir as to call forth a refutation at the hands of other Oxford divines of the age.
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Wood's Historia et Antiquitates, 118; Dugdale's Monasticon (ed. 1830), vi. 1598.]
T. A. A.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Banks, Sarah Sophia

​BANKS, SARAH SOPHIA (1744–1818), only sister of Sir Joseph Banks, was born in 1744 and died on 27 Sept. 1818, at her brother's house in Soho Square, after a short illness. She had kindred tastes to her brother, and although debarred from such adventurous voyages as he undertook, she amassed a considerable collection of objects of natural history, books, and coins. Sir Joseph Banks presented her coins and engravings to the British Museum. The Abbé Mann, one of her brother's correspondents, presented her, in 1797, with a collection of German coins which she added to her collection (Letters of Eminent Literary Men, Camd. Soc. pp. 445–7).
B. D. J.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bankwell, John de

1904 Errata appended.
​BANKWELL, BAKWELL, BACQWELL, or BANQUELLE, JOHN de (d. 1308), judge, was appointed in 1297 to travel the forests in Essex, Huntingdon, Northampton, Rutland, Surrey, and Sussex, for the purpose of enforcing the observance of the forest laws of Henry m, and in 1299 was made a justice itinerant for Kent, and a baron of the exchequer in 1307. We find him summoned to attend the king's coronation, and parliament in 1308. In this year he died, and his widow, Cicely, was relieved from the payment of four marks, at which her property had been assessed for taxation, by favour of the king. He had landed property at Lee and elsewhere in Kent, which descended, according to the Kentish custom of gavelkind, to his two sons Thomas and William.
[Parl. Writs, ii. div. ii. pt. i. 17, 18, pt. ii. 5; Madox's Hist. of the Exch. ii. 230; Hasted's Kent, i. 64, 92; Dugdale's Chron. Ser. 33, 34.]
J. M. R.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.14 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 136 | ii | 13 | Bankwell, John de: after 1308 read He had been alderman successively of Cripplegate (1286-9) and Dowgate (1291-8) wards, and was the first 'clerk' or Town Clerk of London on record. (Cf. Letter Book A, fo. 74 b, under date Nov. 1084.) He lost his life by being trampled on at court at Edward II's coronation, 25 Feb. 1308 |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bankwell, Roger de

​BANKWELL, ROGER de (fl. 1340), judge, perhaps of the same family as John de Bankwell [q. v.], was one of three commissioners entrusted with the assessment of the tallage in the counties of Nottingham and Derby in 1333, and a member of another commission directed to inquire into the circumstances connected with a fire which had recently occurred at Spondon in Derbyshire, the sufferers by which prayed temporary exemption from taxation on account of their losses. He appears as a counsel in the yearbook for 1340, in 1341 was appointed to a justiceship of the king's bench, and was one of those assigned to try petitions from Gascony, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and 'other foreign parts' between the years 1341 and 1347.
[Hot. Parl. ii. 147, 447; Rymer's Fœdera, ed. Clarke, ii. pt. ii. 1133; Dugdale's Chron. Ser. 44.]
J. M. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bankyn, John

​BANKYN or BANEKYNE, JOHN (fl. 1382), Augustinian friar and opponent of Wycliffe, was born in London and educated in the Augustinian monastery of that city and afterwards at Oxford, where he attained the degree of doctor of divinity. The single recorded act of his life is his presence at the provincial council of Blackfriars which condemned certain of Wycliffe's opinions in, May 1382 (Fasciculi Zisaniorum, pp. 286, 499; cf. pp. 272 sq.: ed. Shirley, Rolls Series). Bishop Bale states that Bankyn was a popular preacher and an able disputant, and that his ​writings comprise ‘Determinationes’ and ‘Sermones ad Populum,’ as well as a book ‘Contra Positiones Wiclevi’ (Script. Illustr. Catal. vi. 97). Of these works, however, no copies are known to be extant.
The ambiguity of the manuscript of the ‘Fasciculi Zizaniorum’ (Bodl. Libr. e Mus. 86, fol. 65 b, col. 1), which ignores the distinction between n and u, has led Shirley to print the name ‘Baukinus;’ and Foxe (Acts and Monuments, i. 495, ed. 1684) anglicises it as ‘Bowkin.’ The n, however, appears in two other copies (Fasc. Ziz. p. 499, and Wilkins, Concil. Magn. Brit. iii. 158.)
[The additions which Pits (Relat. Hist. de Rebus Angl. i. 539, 161) makes to Bankyn's biography are ostensibly derived from the Fasciculi; but neither the edition nor the manuscript of this work contains anything beyond the bare name of the friar, and Pits's notice may be safely taken as a simple catholic version of Bale. The article in J. Pamphilus, Chron. Ord. Fratr. Eremit. S. August. (Rome, 1581, quarto), is equally unoriginal.]
R. L. P.
# Chaucer (Longfellow)

An old man in a lodge within a park;  The chamber walls depicted all around  With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,  And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark  Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;  He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,  Then writeth in a book like any clerk. He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote  The Canterbury Tales, and his old age  Made beautiful with song; and as I read I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note  Of lark and linnet, and from every page  Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avianus, Johann

Avianus, Johann, of Eisenberg, died there in 1617. He wrote some works on music.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Aviles, Manuel Leitam Be

Aviles, Manuel Leitam Be. Chapel. master at Granada in 1625, and composer of several masses.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avenarius, Philippe

Avenarius, Philippe, organist at Altenburg, published some sacred music at Nuremburg in 1572.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Aventinus, Johannes

Aventinus, Johannes, a renowned German historian, died at Ratisbon in 1534. He wrote a work entitled "Musicae Rudimenta."
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avertel

Avertel. A composer of music for wind instruments at Vienna, at the end of the last century.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avicenna

Avicenna, a celebrated Arabian physician, died in 1036. He wrote a treatise on music in the Persian language.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avena

Avena. (L.) An oaten straw. This reed, as supposed, was the third kind of musical instrument used by the ancients, and succeeded that formed of the horns of quadrupeds. The first was a shell : so simple was the origin of music ! To such artless beginnings do we trace its counterpoint, fugue, double fugue, pealing choruses, melting airs, exalting grandeur, thrilling sweetness, and all its magic power over our passions.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avenarius, Johann

Avenarius, Johann, a German professor of theology, died in 1692. He left a work en-titled "Musica."
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avia, J

Avia, J., a musical amateur, published in 1650, at Constance, a collection of convivial songs.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avison, Charles

Avison, Charles, organist at Newcastle and pupil of Geminiani, was the author of an essay on musical expression, published in the year 1752. He assisted in the publication of Marcello's music to the Psalms, adapted to English words. Of his own compositions there are extant five collections of concertos for violins, and two sets of sonatas for the harpsichord and two violins. (Clementi's Cat.) The music of Avison is light and elegant, but it wants originality. In his essay on musical expression, he was the encomiast of Marcello and Geminiani, frequently to the prejudice of Handel. His work was answered by Dr. Hayes of Oxford, who proved Avison to have been by no means a profound contrapuntist. Soon after Avison republished his book, with a reply to Dr. Hayes, and a letter containing many detached particulars relative to mu-sic. This last edition of Avison's work is now very scarce.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Axamenta

Axamenta. (L.) A denomination given to the verses, or songs, sung by the Salii, in honor of all men. The axamenta were never accompanied by instruments.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Azais

Azais published, in 1776, " A Method for Music, according to a new Plan," and, in 1780, some sonatas and other instrumental music.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Azione sacra

Azione sacra. (I.) A sacred drama.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avosani, Orfeo

Avosani, Orfeo, born near Milan in the early part of the seventeenth century, by no means justified by his talents the title which he chose to bestow on himself of Husband to Eurydice. He published some church music.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avollo

Avollo, or AVOLIO, J., appears, by Breitkopf's Catalogue of 1802, to have been a composer of instrumental music at Leipsic. (See also Clementi's Cat.)
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Avontano, Pietro

Avontano, Pietro, a Neapolitan composer, published, in 1732, twelve sonatas at Amsterdam.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Axt, F. S

Axt, F. S., died in Germany in 1745. He wrote a work entitled "Amazes Musicus."
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Aylward, Theodore

Aylward, Theodore, was one of the assistant directors at the commemoration of Han-del, in 1784, at Westminster Abbey. He composed some church music.
# Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Azopardi, Francesco

Azopardi, Francesco, chapel-master, published, about the year 1760, a small treatise on composition, which was translated into 1 French.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Charlton, Lionel

​CHARLTON, LIONEL (1720–1788), topographer, was born at Upper Stobbilee in the parish of Bellingham, Northumberland, on 2 Dec. 1720. After having been for some years at a free grammar school he attended the university of Edinburgh for one or two seasons. About 1748 he settled at Whitby as a teacher and land-surveyor. His school, which he kept in the toll-booth or town-house, was for many years the principal school in Whitby, and produced a number of excellent scholars. Charlton published ‘The History of Whitby and of Whitby Abbey, collected from the original records of the Abbey, and other authentic memoirs, never before made public,’ York, 1779, 4to. He died on 16 May 1788, and was buried in Whitby churchyard, where there is a tombstone thus inscribed: ‘Erected to the Memory of Lionel Charlton, Philomath, who died the 16th of May 1788, aged 66 years. Also Mary, his Wife, who died the 9th of March 1805, aged 72 years. Also two of their children, who died in their infancy.'
[Gent. Mag. lviii. (it) 933; Nichols’s Lit. Anecd. viii. 737; Nichols’s lllustr. of Lit. iii. 783-8, vii. 412, viii. 188-9; Sykes’s Local Records (1833), i. 346; Gough’s British Topography, ii. 449; Richardson's Local Historian's Table-book (Hist. Div.), ii. 3l6.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chalmers, W. A.

​CHALMERS, W. A. (fl. 1798), water-colour painter, chiefly of architectural subjects, worked in London towards the end of the last century. From 1790 to 1794 he exhibited nine pictures at the Royal Academy. In the former year he appeared with a ‘View in the Collegiate Church, Westminster,’ and ‘Mrs. Jordan as Sir Harry Wildair;’ in 1791 two interiors of Westminster Abbey; in 1792 ‘The Interment of the late President (Sir Joshua Reynolds) at St. Paul's;’ in 1793 ‘The Interior of Henry VII's Chapel with the Ceremony of the Installation;’ and in the next year the ‘West Front of the Abbey, Bath.’ After an interval of four years he exhibited in 1798 ‘Mr. Kemble as the “Stranger,”’ and the ‘Tomb of Henry VII.’ He seems to have died young.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chalmers, George Paul

​CHALMERS, GEORGE PAUL (1836–1878), painter, was born at Montrose in 1836, and educated at the burgh school of that town. Notwithstanding a juvenile precocity in drawing, he was apprenticed to an apothecary, and afterwards became clerk to a ship-chandler. Finally he determined to be a painter, and abandoned these base pursuits. He studied at Edinburgh in the Trustees' School, and maintained himself the while by painting portraits. His first exhibited picture was ‘A Boy's Head’ in chalk. A portrait head of J. Pettie, R.A., was exhibited in 1863, and a subject piece, ‘The Favourite Air,’ in the following year. In 1867 he was elected associate of the Scottish Academy, and in 1871 a full member.
To the Royal Academy of London he sent six works between 1863 and 1876. He painted ​portraits, subject pictures, and landscapes—the last especially in his later years. ‘These were remarkable for their richness of colour.’ In general he was a careful and even fastidious painter, taking high rank with his brother Scots. On 15 Feb. 1878 he attended the Scotch Academy dinner. Returning thence (and ‘from a subsequent engagement with some brother artists’) evil befell him. Apparently he was attacked and robbed. At least he was found by the police in an area ‘with his pockets rifled.’ He never recovered from this accident, and died on the 20th of the same month. Appreciative notices of Chalmers appeared in the ‘Art Journal’ and in the ‘Academy’ at the time of his death. Shortly before that event the ‘Portfolio’ published an etching by Paul Rajon after one of his pictures.
E. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chalmers, William

1904 Errata appended.
​CHALMERS, Sir WILLIAM (1787–1860), lieutenant-general, eldest son of William Chalmers of Glenericht, near Blairgowrie, Perthshire, was born at Glenericht in 1787. He entered the army on 9 July 1803 as ensign in the 52nd foot, becoming lieutenant on 23 Oct. of the same year. ​With the first battalion of his regiment, of which he was at one time adjutant, young Chalmers served in Sicily in 1806–7, and when an order was issued directing that eleven British regiments then stationed in that island should be augmented each by a company of Sicilians enlisted for seven years' general service under the British crown, it fell to him, as senior subaltern, to raise the regimental quota of men for that purpose. He became captain in the second battalion in 1807. He served with his regiment in Portugal and Spain in 1808–9; in the Walcheren expedition, including the bombardment of Flushing; and subsequently as a regimental officer and as brigade-major of various infantry brigades in the Peninsular campaigns from 1810 to 1814, in the course of which he was present in seventeen engagements, including the battles of Barossa, Salamanca, and Vittoria, and the various actions in the Pyrenees and on the Nivelle, and at the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and San Sebastian; had altogether six horses shot under him; and on one occasion—the attack on the entrenchments of Sarre in 1813—was himself very severely wounded. He received a brevet majority for service in the field in 1813, and a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy for Waterloo. At the latter period he was serving as aide-de-camp to his uncle, Major-general Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, afterwards Sir Kenneth Douglas, bart., of Glenbervie, who was commanding at Antwerp, which was in a very critical state, but got leave to join his regiment before the battle, where he commanded the right wing of the 52nd, and had three horses killed under him. He was also present at the capture of Paris, and with the army of occupation in France until 1817, when he retired from active military life. He married in 1826 the daughter of Thomas Price. He became brevet colonel in 1837, was made K.C.H., and C.B. the year following. He became a major-general in 1846, a knight-bachelor in 1848, colonel of 20th foot Feb.–Oct. 1853 and of the 78th highlanders in 1853, and became lieutenant-general in 1854. He had the Peninsular medal with eight clasps, and the Waterloo medal. Chalmers, who was left a widower in 1851, died at his seat, Glenericht, on 2 June 1860. His age appears to have been given incorrectly in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ and other obituary notices.
[Army Lists; Moorsom's Hist. Rec. 52nd Light Infantry; Leeke's Lord Seaton's Regt. at Waterloo, vol. i.; Dod's Knightage; Gent. Mag. 3rd series (ix.) p. 104.]
H. M. C.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.60 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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| 455 | i | 46 | Chalmers, Sir William: after 1848 insert was colonel of the 20th foot Feb.-Oct. 1853 |