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

1904 Errata appended.
​ADAM, Sir CHARLES (1780–1853), admiral, was the son of the Right Hon. William Adam, of Blair-Adam, Kinross, and of Eleanor, daughter of the tenth Lord Elphinstone, and sister of Captain Elphinstone, afterwards Admiral Lord Keith. He was born on 6 Oct. 1780, and entered the navy at a very early age, under the direct patronage of his uncle, with whom he continued to serve till, in 1795, he was sent to the Victorious, of 74 guns, as acting-lieutenant. In June 1799 he was made captain, and appointed to the Sybille frigate, in which ship, on 19 Aug. 1801, under circumstances of great difficulty and intricate navigation, he captured the French frigate, Chiffonne, which had taken up a position in Mahé Roads, in the Seychelle Islands. He was afterwards, in May 1803, appointed to command the Chiffonne, and in her took part in the blockade of Boulogne and the north coast of France through the summer of 1805. In 1811–13 he commanded the Invincible, of 74 guns, in active operations on the coast of Spain, and after the peace was for many years captain of the royal yacht, till in May 1825 he was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral. He became vice-admiral in 1837, and admiral in 1848. In January 1835 he was made K.C.B., and sat as M.P. for Clackmannan and Kinross from 1833 to 1841. Between August 1841 and May 1845 he was commander-in-chief in the West Indies; he was one of the lords of the admiralty from April 1835 to August 1841, and again in 1846–47, when he was appointed governor of Greenwich Hospital, where he died on 16 Sept. 1853. A subscription bust, said to be a good likeness, is in the Painted Hall.
J. K. L.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.2 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 85 | i | 34 | Adam, Sir Charles: for January read August |
| | | 35 | after M.P. insert for Kinross in 1831-2 and |
| | | 39 | before from insert in Nov.-Dec. 1834 |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Adam, John

​ADAM, JOHN (1779–1825), Anglo-Indian statesman, was eldest son of William Adam [see Adam, William, 1751–1839]. He was born on 4 May 1779; was educated at the Charterhouse; received a writership on the Bengal establishment in 1794; and, after a year at Edinburgh University, landed at Calcutta in 1796. The greater part of his career was spent in the secretariat. He was private as well as political secretary to the Marquis of Hastings, whom he accompanied in the field during the Pindari or third Mahratta war. In 1817 he was nominated by the court of directors member of council; and as senior member of council he became acting governor-general of India on Lord Hastings's departure in January 1823. His rule lasted for seven months, until the arrival of Lord Amherst in August of the same year. It is memorable in history chiefly for one incident — the suppression of the freedom of the English press in India. James Silk Buckingham, afterwards M.P. and founder of the ‘Athenæum,’ had established the ‘Calcutta Journal,’ which published severe comments upon the government. Adam cancelled Buckingham's license, without which no European could then reside in India, and passed regulations restricting newspaper criticism. Buckingham appealed to the court of proprietors at home, to the House of Commons, and to the Privy Council; but the action of Adam was sustained by each of these three bodies. Another unpopular act of Adam's governor-generalship was to withdraw official support from the banking firm of Palmer, who had acquired a preponderant influence with the Nizam of the Deccan. Adam also deserves credit for being the first Indian ruler to appropriate a grant of public money for the encouragement of native education. Adam's health had now broken down. After in vain seeking relief by a voyage to Bombay, and by a visit to Almorah in the lower Himalayas, he was ordered home to England. He died off Madagascar on 4 June 1825. Though some of his public acts involved him in unpopularity, his personal character had won him almost universal ​goodwill. His portrait was painted by G. Chinnery for the Calcutta Town Hall.
J. S. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Adalbert (fl.1160?)

Non-existent author, according to the ODNB.
​ADALBERT of Spalding (fl. 1160?) is said by Bale and Pits to have been a Cluniac monk belonging to the abbey of Spalding in Lincolnshire, and to have flourished about the year 1160. Our early biographers give him great praise for his knowledge of the Scriptures and the fathers. They also speak in high terms of his elegance of style and his modesty in always following the opinions of these authorities rather than his own. His favourite author, they add, was Gregory the Great, from whose treatise upon Job (Moralia) he compiled his own work entitled ‘De Statu Hominis,’ or ‘Speculum Status Hominis.’ An ‘Epistola ad Herimannum Presbyterum’ and certain ‘Homiliæ’ are also mentioned among his writings.
But, whatever may be the case with the ‘Homiliæ,’ it is very questionable whether the author of the ‘Speculum’ and the ‘Epistola ad Herimannum’ has any right to the surname ‘Spaldingensis,’ or, indeed, to be considered as an Englishman at all. For Boston Buriensis (cir. 1410), the first English writer who mentions the ‘Speculum,’ calls it the work of Adalbert the Deacon, and describes it as a book divided into 155 chapters, and composed of extracts from Gregory's ‘Moralia.’ More than one hundred years later Leland (Collect. iii. 32) found at Spalding a work entitled ‘Adelberti liber Diaconi ad Herimannum Presbyterum.’ Now there are many copies extant of a letter addressed by Adalbert the Deacon to a priest Herman, all acting as a kind of preface to a book of extracts from the ‘Moralia’ of St. Gregory. Moreover, this letter speaks of the compilation that follows as a ‘Speculum,’ the very title given by Boston and Pits to the similar collection of their Adalbert, to whom the latter assigns likewise an ‘Epistola ad Hermannum.’ When we consider the extent to which Bale and Pits have availed themselves of the labours of Boston and Leland, we can hardly avoid the inference that all four are alluding to one and the same work—a series of extracts from Gregory's ‘Moralia’ prefaced by a letter from Adalbert the Deacon to Herman the priest—but that the two first, learning from Leland that a copy of this book existed at Spalding, have imagined it to be the production of an Adalbertus Spaldingensis of their own creation. Again, the greater number of the manuscripts of this work (cf. Martene, Anecdot. i. 84, and Tanner) are to be found abroad—a fact which tells strongly against its author's being an Englishman, though we need hardly go so far as Tanner, who suggests that he was a monk of St. ​Martin's at Tours, and identifies Adalbert's correspondent with Herman, the abbot of that establishment till 1136. The editor in Migne calls this Adalbert ‘Scolasticus Mettensis,’ and boldly assigns the year 879 as the date of his death.
Though the author of the ‘Speculum’ can hardly have been a native of Spalding, yet there may have been an ‘Adalbertus Spaldingensis’ who was the author of the ‘Homiliæ’ mentioned by Bale and Pits; and the testimony of these two writers may then be accepted as regards his character and the age in which he lived.
T. A. A.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Adam, James

​ADAM, JAMES (d. 1794), architect, was the younger brother of Robert Adam, and so associated with him in all his works that it is difficult to assign any particular building to him. He is generally credited with the design of Portland Place. For some time before the reform of the board of works by Burke's bill he held the appointment of architect to George III, and was master mason of the board of ordnance in North Britain. He was the author of ‘Practical Essays on Agriculture,’ and was engaged on a history of architecture at the time of his death. This took place in Albemarle Street on 20 Oct. 1794, and was caused by apoplexy. [See Adam, Robert.]
C. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Adair, Robert

1904 Errata appended.
​ADAIR, Sir ROBERT (1763–1856), the last survivor of Charles James Fox's friends, was the son of Robert Adair, sergeant-surgeon to George III, and Lady Caroline Keppel. He was born on 24 May 1763, and was sent to Westminster school, and thence to the university of Göttingen, where Canning, who styled him ‘bawba-dara-adul-phoolah’ and many other names, satirised him as falling in love with ‘sweet Matilda Pottingen.’ Before he was twenty he was ranked among Fox's intimate friends, and, had the whig minister gained the seals of the foreign office in 1788, Adair wduld have been his under-secretary. When the French revolution broke out, he visited Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, to study its effects on foreign states, and to qualify himself for diplomatic office. Some of his political opponents believed that he had been despatched by Fox to Russia to thwart the policy of Mr. Pitt, and the accusation was reproduced in 1821 in the Bishop of Winchester's ‘Memoir of Pitt’ which brought about an angry correspondence in print between the bishop and Adair. He sat in parliament for the whig boroughs of Appleby and Camelford. During Fox's tenure of office in 1806 he was despatched on a mission to Vienna to warn Austria of the dangers to which she was exposed from the power of France, and on his return from Vienna was sent by his old antagonist Canning to Constantinople to open up a negotiation for peace with the Porte. Memoirs of these missions were published by Sir Robert Adair in 1844–1845. From 1831 to 1835 he was engaged on a special mission in the Low Countries, where his exertions prevented a general war between the Flemish and the Dutch troops. For his services in the East he was created a K.C.B. in 1809, and at the time of his death he was the senior knight of the order. His successful mission in 1831 was rewarded by his appointment as member of the privy council, and the grant of the highest pension which could be awarded to him. Among his other writings are a reprint in 1802 and 1853 of Fox's ‘Letter to the Electors of Westminster in 1793, with an application of its principle to subsequent events,’ and a sketch of the character of the late Duke of Devonshire (1811). His wife was Mlle. Angélique Gabrielle, daughter of the Marquis d'Hazincourt. His stores of recollection of diplomatic and political life made him a frequent guest at the chief whig houses of London, and his name is frequently mentioned in the diary of Tom Moore. Full of years and honours he died at Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, on 3 Oct. 1855.
W. P. C.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.2 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 73 | ii | 12 | Adair, Sir Robert: after 1845 insert In 1828 he was made a privy councillor. |
| | | 16-18 | omit For his services . . . order |
| | | 18-21 | for His successful mission . . . and the grant read He was appointed G.C.B. (civil) in 1831, and the success of his mission was further rewarded by the grant |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gill, Alexander (1565-1635)

​GILL, ALEXANDER, the elder (1565–1635), high-master of St. Paul's School, born in Lincolnshire 7 Feb. 1564-5, was admitted scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in September 1583, and proceeded B.A. 1586 and M. A. 1589. Wood believed that he was a schoolmaster at Norwich, where he was living in 1597. On 10 March 1607-8 he was appointed high-master of St. Paul's School in succession to Richard Mulcaster [q. v.] Milton was among his pupils from 1620 to 1625. 'He had,' says Wood, 'such an excellent way of training up youth that none in his time went beyond him; whence 'twas that many noted persons in church and state did esteem it the greatest of their happiness that they had been educated under him.' The escapade of his son [see Gill, Alexander, the younger] in 1628 caused him much disquietude, and he successfully exerted himself supplicating 'on his knees,' says Aubrey to obtain at the hands of Laud, with whom he was on friendly terms, a remission of the punishment inflicted by the Star-chamber. He died at his house in St. Paul's Churchyard 17 Nov. 1635, and was buried 20 Nov. in Mercers' Chapel. A transcript of his will, dated 30 July 1634, is among Wood's MSS. (D 11) at the Bodleian Library. His widow Elizabeth received a pension from the Mercers' Company till 1648. He had two sons, Alexander [q. v.] and George, who was in holy orders (cf. Masson, i. 211). A daughter, Annah Banister, received grants from the Mercers' Company in 1666 and (as a widow) in 1673.
Gill was not only famous as a schoolmaster, but 'was esteemed by most persons to be a learned man, a noted Latinist, critic, and divine.' He published:
* 'A Treatise concerning the Trinitie of Persons in Unitie of the Deitie ' (written at Norwich in 1597), London, 1601, 8vo; reprinted with 3 (see below), 1635. This was a remonstrance addressed to Thomas Mannering, an anabaptist, who 'denied that Jesus is very God of very God,' and said that 'he was but man only, yet endued with the infinite power of God.'
* 'Logonomia Anglica, qua gentis sermo facilius addiscitur,' London, by John Beale, 1619, 2nd edit. 1621; dedicated to James I. Gill's book, written in Latin, opens with suggestions for a phonetic system of English spelling by reviving the Anglo-Saxon signs for the two sounds of th and similar means. In his section on grammatical and rhetorical figures Gill quotes freely from Spenser, Wither, Daniel, and other English poets, with whose works he shows an intimate acquaintance. For Spenser he had a special affection, preferring him to Homer (pp. 124-5); nearly all his examples were taken from the 'Faerie Queen.'
* 'Sacred Philosophie of the Holy Scripture,' London, 1635, 8vo, a commentary on the Apostles' Creed, with a reprint of an attempted demonstration of the truth of the Apostles' Creed in opposition to the beliefs of Turks, Jews, and other heretics.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 597-600; Gardiner's Reg. St. Paul's School, p. 32; Masson's Life of Milton, i. 78-82; Aubrey's Lives, ii. 286.]
S. L. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gilfillan, Robert

​GILFILLAN, ROBERT (1798–1850), Scotch poet, was born 7 July 1798 at Dunfermline, and was the son of a master weaver. In 1811, on the removal of the family to Leith, Gilfillan was there apprenticed to a cooper, whom he served, with a somewhat languid interest, for seven years. For three years after 1818 he was a grocer's shopman in Dunfermline, mingling freely with contemporaries interested like himself in literature, and receiving generous appreciation of his growing poetical gift. This time he considered the happiest part of his life. Returning to Leith he was successively clerk to a firm of oil and colour merchants, confidential clerk to a wine merchant, and collector of police rates. This last post he held from 1837 till his death, 4 Dec. 1850. During the same period he was grand bard to the grand lodge of freemasons in Scotland, being in this respect a successor of Burns. Gilfillan never married, and a niece reared under his care kept house for him in his latter years.
Beginning his poetical career in local newspapers while still an apprentice, Gilfillan speedily came to be recognised as a genuine Scottish singer. Favourable references to him in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ,’ and especially to his ‘Peter m'Craw,’ a clever humorous satire of 1828, induced him to publish, and he issued a small volume of ‘Original Songs’ in 1831. Two other enlarged editions appeared in his lifetime, and several of his best songs were aptly set to music by Peter m'Leod. Gilfillan contributed in his later years to the ‘Dublin University Magazine’ and the ‘Scotsman,’ and also to the Scottish anthology, ‘Whistle-Binkie.’ After his death a collective edition of his works (1851), with a prefatory biography, was prepared by William Anderson (1805–1866) [q. v.] Besides ‘Peter m'Craw,’ Gilfillan's best songs are his touching ‘Fare thee well’ and his plaintive and melodious emigrant's song, ‘Why left I my Hame?’ which instantly won and retained a wide popularity.
[Anderson's Scottish Nation, and edition of Gilfillan's Poems; Whistle-Binkie; Wilson's Poets and Poetry of Scotland.]
T. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gill, John

​GILL, JOHN, D.D. (1697–1771), baptist minister, was born of poor parents at Kettering, Northamptonshire, on 23 Nov. 1697. He spent a very short time at Kettering grammar school. In November 1716 he was baptised, and shortly after began preaching. In 1718 he was ordained at Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire. In 1719 he removed to the baptist congregation at Horselydown, Southwark, which in 1757 was removed to a chapel near London Bridge. A Wednesday evening lectureship was founded for him in Great Eastcheap by his admirers in 1729, and this he held till 1756. In 1748 he was created D.D. at Aberdeen. He died at Camberwell, 14 Oct. 1771.
Gill's principal works were: 1. ‘Exposition of the Song of Solomon,’ 1728. 2. ‘The Prophecies of the Old Testament respecting the Messiah considered,’ 1728, written in answer to Collins. 3. ‘Treatise on the Doctrine of the Trinity,’ designed to check the spread of Sabellianism among the baptists, 1731. 4. ‘The Cause of God and Truth,’ in answer to Whitby's discourse on the five points, 4 vols. 1735–8. 5. ‘Exposition of the Holy Scriptures,’ his magnum opus, in which he utilises his extensive rabbinical learning. The New Testament portion appeared in 3 vols. folio in 1746–8; the Old Testament, in 6 vols. folio, was completed in 1766. 6. ‘Dissertation on the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language, Letters, Vowel Points, and Accents,’ 1767. 7. ‘A Body of Doctrinal Divinity,’ 1767. 8. ‘A Body of Practical Divinity,’ 1770. 9. A collection of sermons and tracts, with memoir, 1773, 3 vols. 4to.
[Memoir by Dr. Ripon, 1816.]
T. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gillan, Robert

​GILLAN, ROBERT (1800–1879), Scotch divine, was born at Hawick, Roxburghshire, in 1800. His father, the Rev. Robert Gillan, son of another minister of the same name, was appointed minister of Ettrick, 11 May 1787, and transferred to Hawick 30 Dec. 1789. He retired from the ministry of his church 7 May 1800, and died at Edinburgh 7 May 1824, aged 63, having married, 4 April 1798, Marion, daughter of the Rev. William Campbell. He was the author of ‘An Account of the Parish of Hawick’ in Sir John Sinclair's ‘Statistical Account of Scotland,’ 1791, vol. viii.; ‘Abridgments of the Acts of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland,’ 1803, other editions in 1811 and 1821; ‘View of Modern Astronomy, Geography, &c.;’ ‘A Compendium of Ancient and Modern Geography,’ 1823; and he edited ‘The Scottish Pulpit, a Collection of Sermons,’ 1823. Robert Gillan, the third of that name, studied at the high school and university of Edinburgh, where he was early noted for his extensive scholarship and impressive oratory. On 7 July 1829 he was licensed to preach the gospel by the presbytery of Selkirk, and ordained minister to the congregation at Stamfordham, Northumberland, in October 1830. He removed to the church at South Shields in October 1833, succeeding to Holytown, Lanarkshire, in 1837, where he continued to 1842. After being at Wishaw in the same county for six months, he accepted the parish of Abbotshall, Fifeshire, on the secession of the non-intrusion ministers in May 1843, and from that place was brought to St. John's, Glasgow, on 25 Feb. 1847. Here he remained during a long period, became very popular, and preached to large congregations. He took an active interest in all religious or social movements, and was an early opponent of the law of patronage. The university of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of D.D. in 1853. The incessant activity of the Glasgow charge at length told on his health, and on 10 Jan. 1861 he accepted charge of the small church of Inchinnan, Renfrewshire. He was, however, still able to work, and being appointed one of the first two lecturers on pastoral theology, he prepared an admirable course of lectures, which were on two separate occasions delivered at the four Scottish universities. On 11 Oct. 1870 he was publicly entertained in Glasgow, and presented with his portrait. He was devotedly attached to the established church of Scotland, and as moderator presided over the general assembly of 1873. He died at the manse, Inchinnan, 1 Nov. 1879. His wife died 23 Jan. 1847. By her he had a son, the Rev. George Green Gillan, a chaplain in the ​H.E.I. Co.'s service. Gillan was the author of: 1. ‘A General Fast Sermon,’ 1832. 2. ‘The Intellectual and Spiritual Progress of the Christian in the Church of Scotland Pulpit,’ 1845, ii. 13–31. 3. ‘Sermons at Glasgow,’ 1855. 4. ‘The Decalogue, a Series of Discourses on the Ten Commandments,’ 1856.
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Aylmer, Charles

​AYLMER, CHARLES, D.D. (1786–1847), an Irish Jesuit, born at Painstown, county Kildare, 29 Aug. 1786. He entered the Society of Jesus at Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire, and was created D.D. in 1814 while at Palermo, where he was stationed; for several years. For the use of the British catholics in that city he, in conjunction with two of his brethren, Paul Ferley and Bartholomew Esmonde, compiled 'A short Explanation of the Principal Articles of the Catholic Faith' (Palermo, at the royal printing-office), 1812, 12mo; and 'The Devout Christian's Daily Companion, being a Selection of pious Exercises for the use of Catholics' (Palermo, 1812, 12mo). He became rector of Clongowes College, in Ireland, in 1817, was professed of the four vows 16 Jan. 1820, and lived in Dublin from about the year 1821 till his death on 4 July 1847. He was superior of the Dublin Residence in 1816, 1822, and 1829 (when the first stone of the church in Gardiner Street was laid), and again in 1841. Father Aylmer promoted in Dublin a society for the printing of catholic books. His brother was an officer of Austrian cuirassiers, and was considered one of the best swordsmen in that service.
[Caballero, Bibliothecæ Scriptorum Soc. Jesu Supplementa. Supplementum alterum (Rome, 1816), 3; Hogan's Chronological Cat. of the Irish Province S. J. 88; Narbone's Bibliografia Sicola, iii. 342; De Backer's Bibliothique des Ecrivains de la Société de Jésus (1869), 348.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ayloffe, John

1904 Errata appended.
​AYLOFFE, JOHN (d. 1685), satirist, wrote one of the most drastic and powerful satires against the Stuarts, entitled 'Marvell's Ghost.' It was furtively circulated as a broadside, but was included in Nichols's 'Select Collection of Poems '(iii. 186). The editor calls him 'Captain John Ayloffe,' and says he was educated in Trinity College, Cambridge. This is all he knew. It seems certain that he was the John Ayloffe, Esq., who was executed before the gate of the Inner Temple on 30 Oct. 1685 for his participation in the Rye House plot. He went with the Earl of Argyle into Scotland, where he was taken, and made an attempt to destroy himself by inflicting a terrible wound in his belly. At his execution it came out that he was of the Temple: had been a 'clubber at the King's Head Tavern,' and 'a green-ribbon man.' 'Marvell's Ghost' is as burning and passionate in its invective as any of Marvell's own. He appears to have left a relative behind him in a William Ayloffe, author of a poem on the death of Charles II and accession of James II.
A. B. G.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.11 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 284 | i | 31 | Ayloffe, John: after (iii. 186) insert together with another poem 'On the Cambridge Commencement, by Captain Aylolfe' (iii. 188-9) |