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# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Abel (d.764)

​ABEL (d. 764), archbishop of Rheims, was a native of Scotland and Benedictine monk. In the early part of the eighth century he left England in company with Boniface, to aid him in his missionary work in Germany, and he did not again return to this country. Abel's missionary labours were mainly confined to the country we now know as Belgium. For many years he held an office of authority in the abbey of Lobbes, in Hainault; and in 744, through the instrumentality of Boniface, who was at the time archbishop of Mainz, Abel became archbishop of Rheims. The office was a very arduous one. All ecclesiastical suits and disputes as to monastical discipline arising in a great part of France were referred to him. His predecessor, Melo, moreover, had been forcibly removed from his post by the council of Soissons (3 March 744), and many barons declared themselves the champions of Melo, and refused to recognise Abel. Carloman, the king of the Frankish empire, favoured the new prelate; but Pope Zacharias, after much hesitation, finally joined his opponents. He declined to confer upon him the pallium, and thus Abel's election was never confirmed. Harassed by these quarrels, Abel at length withdrew from Rheims, and surrendered the see. He retired to Lobbes, and apparently became abbot of the monastery there. The last years of his life he spent in energetic missionary work in Hainault, Flanders, and neighbouring provinces, and he died at Lobbes on 5 Aug. 764. He was buried at Binche, near Jemappes. Subsequently he was canonised, and in the districts where he laboured the day of his death was consecrated to his memory.
His works, which do not seem to have ever been printed, are thus enumerated by Dempster and Tanner: 1. ‘Epistolæ ad Zachariam et Adrianum.’ 2. ‘Ad Rhemensem Ecclesiam.’ 3. ‘Ad Bonifacium Legatum.’ 4. ‘Ad Lobienses Fratres.’ 5. ‘Ad nuper Conversos.’ 6. ‘De Mysteriis Fidei.’
[Dempster's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum; Tanner's Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica; Bollandists' Acta SS. (Augustus), ii. 111–7; Ghesquière's Acta SS. Belgii, vi. 353; Breysig and Hahn's Jahrbücher des fränkischen Reichs (741–752); Allgemeine deutsche Biographie; Migne's Hagiographique, i. 20.]
S. L. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Abel, John

​ABEL, JOHN (1577–1674), was a distinguished architect of timber houses. He built the old town halls of Hereford and Leominster; the former destroyed in 1861, the latter in 1858. Both are illustrated by John Clayton in his ‘Ancient Timber Edifices of England,’ fol. 1846. The Hereford building was finished in the time of James I; that of Leominster in 1633. The following account of Abel is given by Price (Historical Account of Leominster, 1795): ‘The most noted architect in this country of his time; he built the market houses of Hereford, Brecknock, and Kington, and did the timber work of the new church at Abbey Dore. The said John Abel being in Hereford city at the time when the Scots besieged it, in the year 1645, made a sort of mills to grind corn, which were of great use to the besieged; for which contrivance and service King Charles the 1st did afterwards honor him with the title of one of his majesty's carpenters. This architect, after he was ninety years of age, made his own monument, which is in Sarnesfield churchyard, and engraved his own effigy, kneeling with his two wives, and the emblems of his occupation, the rule, compass, and square, and he made the following epitaph:—
This craggy stone or covering is for an architect's bed, That lofty buildings raised high; yet now lyes down his head: His line and rule, so death concludes, are locked up in store, Build they who list, or they who wist, for he can build no more.  His house of clay could hold no longer:  May Heavens frame him a stronger. John Abel.  Vive ut vivas in vitam æternam.’
He died in 1674, aged 97.
Price's Historical Account of Leominster, 1795; Nagler's Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon; Duncomb's History and Antiquities of the County of Hereford, 1804.
E. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Abel, Karl Friedrich

​ABEL, KARL FRIEDRICH (1725–1787), a celebrated player on the viol-di-gamba, was the son of a musician, Christian Ferdinand Abel. He was born at Cöthen in 1725, received his first musical education from his father, and subsequently entered the Thomas Schule at Leipzig, where he was probably a pupil of J. S. Bach. In 1748 he entered the court band at Dresden, remaining there until 1758. He left Dresden ‘with three thalers in his pocket and six symphonies in his bag,’ and his talent as a performer maintained him during his wanderings until he reached England in 1759. Here he found a patron in the Duke of York, and on the establishment of the queen's private band was appointed one of her chamber musicians, with a salary of 200l. a year. At his first concert Abel was announced to play his own compositions on the viol-di-gamba, the harpsichord, and an instrument of his own invention, which he called the Pentachord; but after 1765 he only performed on the viol-di-gamba. On the arrival in 1762 of John Christian Bach the two musicians joined forces, and in 1765 started their celebrated concerts. Abel was in Paris in 1772 and also in 1783, in which year he returned to Germany to visit his brother Leopold August, who was also a musician of eminence. He returned to London in 1785, and occasionally played at concerts until his death, which took place, hastened by his habits of intemperance, June 20, 1787. Abel's compositions chiefly consist of instrumental music. As a player he was remarkable for the beauty of his execution on an instrument which was even in his days almost obsolete, but to which he was nevertheless devoted. It is said that he declared the viol-di-gamba to be ‘the king of instruments;’ and when challenged to play by Richards, the leader of Drury Lane orchestra, exclaimed, ‘What, challenge Abel! No, no, there is but one God and one Abel!’ He was a great admirer of the fine arts, and completely covered the walls of his rooms with drawings by Gainsborough, which the painter used to give him in exchange for his music. In person he was big and portly. He was twice painted by Gainsborough; a portrait of him by Robineau is at Hampton Court Palace, and another by an anonymous artist in the Music School at Oxford.
W. B. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Abdy, Edward Strutt

​ABDY, EDWARD STRUTT (1791–1846), writer on America, was the fifth and youngest son of Thomas Abdy Abdy, Esq., of Albyns, Essex, by Mary, daughter of James Hayes, of Holliport, a bencher of the Middle Temple. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship (B.A. 1813; M.A. 1817). His death occurred at Bath, 12 Oct. 1846, at the age of 56. His works are:
1. ‘Journal of a Residence and Tour in the ​United States of North America, from April 1833 to October 1834,’ 3 vols. Lond. 1835. 2. ‘The Water Cure. Cases of Disease cured by Cold Water (translated from the German), with remarks addressed to people of common sense.’ Lond. 1842, 8vo, being a translation of a pamphlet by Von Falkenstein.
[Gent. Mag. N.S. xxvi. 667; MS. Addit. 19209, f. 6.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Abel, Clarke

​ABEL, CLARKE (1780–1826), botanist, was born about 1780, educated for the medical profession, and on the occasion of Lord Macartney's mission to China was appointed physician on the staff of his lordship, but by the good offices of Sir Joseph Banks he was nominated naturalist with three assistants. He joined H.M.S. Alceste at Spithead on 8 Feb. 1816, accomplished the voyage to China, where he made large collections, and on returning home on 16 Feb. 1817 the ship struck on a reef off Pulo Leat, at the entrance of the straits of Gaspar, and became a total wreck. A portion of the crew proceeded to Batavia in a boat; the remainder were rescued from a position of great peril by H.M.S. Ternate on 6 March.
The whole of Abel's collections went down in the ship, with the exception of a small collection he had previously given to Sir George Staunton. The latter, on hearing of the collector's misfortunes, at once returned the plants, and they were described by Robert Brown in a botanical appendix to an account of the voyage written by Abel under the title of ‘Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China, 1816–7,’ London, 1818. In this volume will be found also descriptions ​of the ‘orang-outang’ and the boa, and his observations on the geology of the Cape have been highly praised. Dr. Abel was subsequently appointed physician to Lord Amherst, the governor-general of India, and died in that country on 24 Nov. 1826. The immediate cause of his death was a fever, but he had been in feeble health for some time, and his constitution was never robust. He was a fellow of the Linnean and Geological Societies of London, and a member of the Asiatic Society and Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta. Robert Brown dedicated a genus to him, Abelia, founded on one of the plants formerly presented to Sir George Staunton.
[Biog. Nouv. Univ. i. 109; Abel's Narrative; Asiatic Journal, xxiii. (1827) 669; Gent. Mag. xcvii. pt. ii. (1827) 644.]
B. D. J.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Abell, John

​ABELL, JOHN (1660?–1716?), a celebrated lutenist and alto singer, was sworn a ‘gentleman of his majesty's chapel extraordinary’ 1 May 1679. He was sent to Italy by Charles II to cultivate his voice, and returned to England in 1681–2, when John Evelyn recorded of him in his Diary (27 Jan.): ‘I never heard a more excellent voice; one would have sworn it had been a woman's, it was so high, and so well and skilfully managed.’ Between 1679 and 1688 he received from the crown large sums of ‘bounty money;’ but at the Revolution he was discharged from the Chapel Royal as a papist, and went to Holland and Germany, where he supported himself by his talents as a singer and player on the lute. In the course of his travels he went so far as Warsaw, where it is said that he refused a request of the King of Poland to sing before the court. The day after this refusal he was ordered to appear at the palace. On his arrival, Abell sat on a chair in the middle of a large hall. No sooner was he seated than the chair was drawn up into the air until it faced a gallery in which were the king and his courtiers. At the same time a number of bears were turned into the hall, and Abell was given the alternative of singing or being lowered to the wild beasts. The terrified singer promptly chose the former course, and afterwards said that he had never sung better in his life. In 1696 overtures were made to him through Daniel Purcell to return to England and sing on the stage at a salary of 500l. a year; but in 1698 he was still abroad (at Aix-la-Chapelle), though he offered to return and sing at the opera in English, Italian, Spanish, or Latin, for 400l. per annum, provided his debts were paid. In 1698 and 1699 he occupied the post of intendant at Cassel; but he seems soon after to have returned to England, for Congreve heard him sing in 1700, and in 1701 he published two collections of songs, prefixed to one of which is a poem in which he states that—
After a twelve years' industry and toil,  Abell, at last, has reach'd his native soil.
He published a song on Queen Anne's coronation, and a few manuscript compositions by him are to be found in contemporary collections. The date of his death is unknown; but in his later years he is said to have been at Cambridge, and in 1716 he gave a concert at Stationers' Hall. Mattheson says that Abell possessed some secret by which he preserved his pure alto voice unimpaired until old age; his extreme carefulness in matters of diet is recorded by the same author.
[Grove's Dict. of Music, i. 5; Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal (Camden Society's Publications, 1872), pp. 17, 129; Evelyn's Diary (ed. 1850), ii. 163; Hawkins's History of Music (ed. 1853), ii. 725; Congreve's Literary Relics, p. 322; Tom Brown's Letters from the Dead to the Living (Works, 2nd ed. 1707), ii. 36; Mattheson's Der vollkommene Kapellmeister (1739); Mendel's Musikalisches Conversations-Lexicon, vol. i.; Ellis MSS. (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 28883, 57); British Museum Catalogue; Catalogue of Library of Royal College of Music.]
W. B. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ash, John (1723-1798)

​ASH, JOHN (1723–1798), physician, was born in Warwickshire, and educated at Trinity College, Oxford; was B.A. in 1743, M. A. in 1746, M.B. in 1750, and M.D. in 1754. He settled at Birmingham, and soon acquired a large practice. The general hospital at Birmingham was founded chiefly through his influence, and he was its first physician. While actively engaged in practice he became affected with temporary mental derangement, for which it is said he found a cure in the study of mathematics and botany. He was admitted a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians 22 Dec. 1786, and in the following year resigned his office in Birmingham and removed to London. He became fellow of the College of Physicians 22 Dec. 1787, and afterwards practised with success in London. He filled the offices of censor of the college in 1789 and 1793; was Harveian orator in 1790, Gulstonian lecturer in 1791, and Croonian lecturer in 1793. He died 18 June 1798, and was buried in Kensington church. His portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is preserved in the hospital at Birmingham, and was engraved by Bartolozzi in 1791.
Dr. Ash is described as a man of great skill in his profession, and of considerable ​general attainments. He was the founder of a social and literary club, called the Eumelian, from a punning allusion to his own name (Greek ἐυμελίας or more correctly ἐῦμμελίης, i.e. with an ashen spear, referred to in Boswell's 'Life of Johnson,' note to the last chapter), and was a fellow of the Royal Society. He wrote: 1. 'Experiments and Observations to investigate by Chemical Analysis the properties of the Mineral Waters of Spa, Aix,' &c. 12mo, London, 1788. 2. Oratio Harveiana, 4to, 1790.
[Gent. Mag. vol. lxviii. 1798; Biog. Dict. of Useful Knowledge Society, article by G. E. Paget, M.D. (from MS. communications); Monk's Roll of College of Physicians, ii. 378.]
J. F. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ascham, Antony

​ASCHAM, ANTONY (d. 1650), parliamentarian ambassador at Madrid, was 'born of a genteel family, educated in Eton school, and thence elected into King's College, Cambridge, 1638.' He took the parliament side in the civil war, and was appointed tutor to James, duke of York. In 1648 he published his 'Discourse of what is lawful during confusions and revolutions of government,' a treatise determining within what time allegiance might be transferred from a sovereign to those who had conquered him. It was answered by Dr. Sanderson (whose tract on the subject was formerly printed with Walton's 'Lives'), and republished in 1689 without the author's name. In August 1649 Ascham was the Hamburg agent of the republic, and in the following June he was appointed resident at Madrid, at a salary of 800l. a year. Clarendon (then Sir Edward Hyde and ambassador for Charles II) sneers at his rival's incompetence; but Milton, some years after, recommending Marvell to Bradshaw, thinks it sufficient commendation to say that 'Mr. Marvell will do as good service as Mr. Ascham.' The dignity of the new resident was jealously guarded by a formal introduction to the Spanish ambassador, and by a special commission under the great seal. At Madrid Hyde was assured that no embassy was in question; it was only that a gentleman had come with letters from the parliament to the king. The letters were never delivered, for the day after his arrival Ascham and his interpreter, De Rivas, were murdered at their inn by John Guillim and William Spark, who, with their four accomplices (Henry and Valentine Progers, John Halsal, and William Arnet), took sanctuary immediately afterwards. The parliament not only demanded their punishment, but ordered that six persons, who had been in arms for the king and had not been admitted to compound, should be at once seized and tried by the high court of justice, an order repeated in November. The Spaniards, to save appearances, took the assassins out of the church, tried, condemned, and restored them to sanctuary, where they were maintained by the contributions of 'persons of quality' till they all had opportunity to escape. Spark, the only protestant among them, was alone recaptured and executed. In 1652 the murderers were excepted from the act of oblivion, and provision was made for Ascham's relations, and so late as 1655 the topic of the murder is urged in Cromwell's declaration against Spain. The pleadings for the punishment of the murderers, translated from the Spanish, were published in 1651 and are reprinted in the 'Harleian Miscellany' (iv. 280, ed. Park).
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 628, 750; Clarendon's Hist.; Thurloe's State Papers; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1649-55.]
R. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ascham, Anthony

​ASCHAM, ANTHONY (fl. 1553), astrologer, studied at Cambridge, became M.B. in 1540, and in 1553 was presented by Edward VI to the vicarage of Burneston, Yorkshire. He is probably to be identified with Anthony, the brother of Roger Ascham (cf. Grant's Vita Axchami in Ascham's Works, ed. Giles, iv. 307). His works are as follows: 1. 'A Little Herbal,' by Ant. Askam, 1550. 2. 'Anthonie Ascham his Treatise of Astronomie, declaring what Herbs and all Kinde of Medicines are appropriate, and also under the influence of the Planets, Signs, & Constellations,' 1550. 3. 'A Treatise of Astronomy, declaring the Leap Year and what is the Cause thereof; and how to know St. Matthis Day for ever, with the marvellous motion of the Sun both in his proper circle, and by the moving that he hath of the 10th, 9th, and 8th sphere,' London, 1552, 8vo. 4. 'A Prognostication and an Almanack made for the Year of our Lord God, 1550.' 5. 'An Almanacke or Prognostication,' &c., for 1552. 6. The like for 1555. 7. The like for 1557. 8. 'Treatise made 1547 of the State and Disposition of the World, with the alteration and changing thereof through the highest planets, called Maxima, Major, Media, and Minor, declaring the very time of the day, houre, and minute that God created the Sunne, Moone, and Starres, and the places where they were first set in the Heavens and the beginning of their movings, ​and so continued to this day, &c.' London, 1558.
[Tanner, 51; Heming's Chartularius Ecclesiæ Vigornensis, by Hearne. ii. App. 647; Pulteney's Botan. Sketches, i. 50; Ames, ed. Herbert and Dibdin, iii. 284; Hazlitt's Handbook to Popular Literature, p. 15.]
# Coolidge v. Payson

* related portals: Supreme Court of the United States.
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United States Supreme Court
15 U.S. 66
Coolidge v. Payson

## Notes

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
# Coolidge v. Long

* related portals: Supreme Court of the United States.
* sister projects: Wikidata item.
United States Supreme Court
282 U.S. 582
Coolidge v. Long
Argued: Dec. 8-9, 1930. --- Decided: Feb 24, 1931
[Syllabus from pages 582-584 intentionally omitted]
Messrs. Robert G. Dodge and Harold S. Davis, both of Boston, Mass., for appellants.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 584-589 intentionally omitted]
Messrs. James S. Eastham, of Lawrence, Mass., and Joseph E. Warner, of Boston, Mass., for appellee.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 589-593 intentionally omitted]
Mr. Justice BUTLER delivered the opinion of the Court.

## Notes

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Anlaby, William

​ANLABY, WILLIAM (1552?–1597), catholic missioner, a native of Etton in Yorkshire, matriculated in the university of Cambridge as a pensioner of St. John's College, 12 Nov. 1567, and proceeded to the degree of B.A. in 1571. He had been brought up in the protestant religion, and entertained a strong aversion to the catholic dogmas; but when about twenty-five years of age, during his travels abroad, he was introduced at Douay to Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Allen, who had established a seminary there. This meeting resulted in Anlaby's conversion and his reception into the college (1574). In 1577 he was ordained priest, and in the following year sent upon the English mission. His missionary labours were in his native county of York. ‘For the first four years of his mission,’ says Bishop Challoner, ‘he travelled always on foot, meanly attired, and carrying with him, usually in a bag, his vestments and other utensils for saying mass; for his labours lay chiefly amongst the poor, who were not stocked with such things. Afterwards, yielding to the advice of his brethren, he used a horse and went something better clad.’ After nearly twenty years' labour on the mission he was condemned as a seminary priest, and was drawn, hanged, and quartered at York on 4 July 1597.
[Diaries of the English College, Douay, 8, 26, 117, 118, 139, 260, 276; Challoner's Memoirs of Missionary Priests (1803), i. 192; Dodd's Church History (1737), ii. 72; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. ii. 225.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Angus, John

​ANGUS, JOHN (1724–1801), independent minister, born at Styford, near Hexham, Northumberland, in 1724, was sent at the age of 16 to the university of Edinburgh. Two years later he removed to London, and in 1748 he took charge of the independent congregation at Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire. For nearly fifty-four years he exercised his ministry in that town, where he died 22 Dec. 1801. He published some occasional discourses, including a funeral sermon on the death of the Rev. D. Parry (1770), and another on the death of the Rev. T. Davidson (1788).
[Gent. Mag. lxxv. 647; Wilson's Dissenting Churches, ii. 242 n.; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Angiers, Paul

​ANGIERS, or ANGIER, PAUL (fl. 1749), an engraver of small merit, of whom little is known, was in London about 1749, and was taught by John Tinney. He was chiefly employed by the booksellers, and etched some neat plates. According to Heineken he died when about thirty. His best plates are 'Roman Ruins' after Pannini, 1749; a landscape after Moucheron, 1755; and 'Dead Game,' after Huet, 1757.
[Dictionaries of Heineken, Strutt, Nagler, Bryan, and Redgrave.]
E. R.