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

​LICHFIELD, LEONARD (1604–1657), printer and author, born in 1604, was son of John and Margaret Lichfield. His father was printer to the university of Oxford from 1617 to 1635, and was also yeoman bedell. Leonard succeeded him as university printer, was ‘privilegiatus’ on 12 Nov. 1630, and also became one of the superior bedells. During the civil war from 1642 to 1646 he was employed by the king to print his declarations, proclamations, and other public papers. After the surrender of Oxford he had his house and goods burned, and was reduced to poverty (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1644 p. 73, 1661–2 pp. 135, 238, 245). On 29 Oct. 1649 the council of state ordered him to enter into ​heavy recognisances not to print any ‘seditious or unlicensed books’ (ib. Dom. 1649–50, p. 524). He died in 1657. Lichfield ends a volume of Oxford poems addressed to Queen Henrietta Maria, entitled ‘Musarum Oxoniensium Charisteria’ (1638), with a few verses entitled ‘The Printer's Close,’ to which his name is subscribed. The lines, which may have been supplied by one of his university friends, are reprinted in Brydges's ‘Restituta,’ i. 147–8.
By his wife Ann (d. 1671) he had a son, Leonard, who carried on the business. When Charles II and his court removed from London to Oxford in order to escape the plague in November 1665, Lichfield was licensed by Arlington to print ‘The Oxford Gazette,’ a folio half sheet, containing the government's official notices—the earliest English periodical of the kind. It appeared bi-weekly from 14 Nov. 1665 till the end of January 1665–6, when on the return of the court to London the publication was continued there as ‘The London Gazette’ (Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, iv. 58). Lichfield in December 1679 was a candidate for the yeoman bedelship (Wood, Life, ed. Bliss, p. lxxxvii); he died 22 Feb. 1685–6, and was succeeded by his son Leonard (fl. 1711).
Another of John Lichfield's sons was Solodell Lichfield, who was elected sub-bedell of law 22 Jan. 1634–5; was ejected by the parliamentary visitors in 1648; was restored in 1660, and was chosen yeoman bedell on Edmund Gayton's death in 1666. According to Wood he kept a public inn at Oxford, ‘and was good for nothing but for eating, drinking, smoaking, and punning’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 758; Wood, Life and Times, Oxf. Hist. Soc., i. 76, ii. 95, 218, 474, cf. iii. 180). At his death in 1671 he was one of the superior bedells.
[Griffiths's Index to Wills at Oxford, p. 39; Addit. MS. 24492, f. 115; Hearne's Notes and Collections (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), vol. iii.; Cat. of Books in Brit. Mus. printed to 1640; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714.]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Leyland, Joseph Bentley

​LEYLAND, JOSEPH BENTLEY (1811–1851), sculptor, born at Halifax on 31 March 1811, was son of Roberts Leyland, a ​well-known naturalist. Early in life he showed a talent for modelling, and adopted sculpture as a profession. He exhibited at Manchester (1832) the model of a greyhound and a colossal statue of ‘Spartacus.’ In 1843 he completed a large head of ‘Satan,’ which he sent to London for exhibition. He resided for a time in London, and studied design under Benjamin Robert Haydon [q. v.] A statue by him of ‘Kilmeny, the Sinless Maiden,’ was purchased for the Literary and Philosophical Society of Halifax. Perhaps Leyland's most important work was a statue of Dr. Beckwith of York, which was placed in York Minster. Leyland did not exhibit at the Royal Academy, but in 1834 and 1839 sent models of groups of hounds to the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street. His group of African bloodhounds was described by Landseer as ‘the noblest modern work of its kind.’ It is now, with a colossal figure, ‘The Thracian Falconer,’ in the Salford Museum. Leyland died at Halifax on 26 Jan. 1851, aged 39.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Art Journal, 1851; private information.]
L. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Snatt, William

Denton, not Benton, in the ODNB.
​SNATT, WILLIAM (1645–1721), nonjuring divine, born at Lewes in 1645, was the son of Edward Snatt, minister and usher of the Southover free school, Lewes. There in 1629 the elder Snatt had John Evelyn, the diarist, as a pupil. William matriculated from Magdalen College, Oxford, on 14 Dec. 1660, and graduated B.A. in 1664. He was collated to the rectory of Benton, Sussex, in 1672, obtained a prebend in Chichester Cathedral in 1675, and the rectory of Cliffe St. Thomas, Sussex, in the same year. He subsequently became vicar of Seaford in 1679, and of Cuckfield and Bishopstone in 1681. A devout and consistent high churchman, he resigned all his preferments rather than take the oaths to William and Mary. He came to London, where he found friends in Hilkiah Bedford [q. v.] and Jeremy Collier, and, like other nonjurors, incurred the suspicion of ‘popery.’ This hostile feeling was confirmed in April 1696, when, in company with Collier and Cook, Snatt attended Sir William Parkyns [q. v.] and Sir John Friend [q. v.] on the scaffold. These men had been found guilty of high treason in conspiring to assassinate William III. Snatt and Collier, however, joined in pronouncing absolution, performing the ceremony with the imposition of hands. The nonjurors subsequently printed the confession of the criminals, in which the title ‘Church of England’ was appropriated to themselves. This provoked a remonstrance from the two archbishops and ten bishops, and on 7 April the grand jury of Middlesex presented Snatt, Collier, and Cook for perpetrating a great affront to the government and a scandal to the church of England. Collier absconded, and issued pamphlets in his defence; but Snatt and Cook were committed to Newgate. They were tried before the king's bench, and, though ably defended by Sir Bartholomew ​Shower [q. v.], were found guilty of serious misdemeanour on 2 July. Such, however, were ‘the lenity of the government and his Grace of Canterbury's moderation in interceding for the delinquents,’ that they were released on bail in the following August. Snatt continued to live in London, where he died in reduced circumstances on 30 Nov. 1721, a ‘true confessor’ of his ‘distressed and afflicted church.’
T. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Snagge, Thomas

​SNAGGE, THOMAS (1536–1592), speaker of the House of Commons, was born in 1536 at Letchworth, Hertfordshire, where his father, Thomas Snagge, was lord of the manor. A brother Robert was a bencher of the Middle Temple, and sat as member for Lostwithiel in the parliament of 1571. In 1552 Thomas entered as a student at Gray's Inn, and was called to the bar by that society in 1554. In 1563 he was appointed ‘reader,’ and in 1574 became ‘double reader.’ He sat as member for the county of Bedford in the parliament of 1571, and appears to have become an effective debater in the House of Commons. On 13 Sept. 1577 the queen, in a private letter to Sir Henry Sidney [q. v.], nominated Snagge to the office of attorney-general for Ireland, ‘being sufficiently persuaded of his learning and judgment in the law wherein he had been in long practice as a counsellor’ (Morrin, Patent and Close Rolls of Ireland, ii. 11). Snagge's patent of appointment was dated 2 Dec. 1577. ‘The Dutye that he oweth to her Majestie and his Countrye,’ wrote Walsingham to Sidney, ‘doth make him leaue all other Respects and willinglie to dedicat himself to that Seruice, for the which I thinke him a Man so well chosen both for Judgement and bould Spirit … as hardlie all the Howses of Court could yeld his like’ (Collins, Letters and Memorials of State, i. 228). Snagge did not belie Walsingham's expectations. Three months after his arrival in Dublin, Sidney wrote of him to Walsingham: ‘I fynde him a Man well learned, sufficient, stoute, and well-spoken, an Instrument of good Service for her Majestie, and soche a one as is carefull to redresse by Wisdome and good Discreation soch Errors as he fyndeth in her Majesties Courts here. So that by his presence I find my selfe well assisted and humblye thank yr Lordships for the sendinge him to me, and more of his Sorte are needed’ (ib. p. 231). Snagge held the office of attorney-general for Ireland for three years, returning to England in 1580, when he was appointed serjeant-at-law. He was treasurer of Gray's Inn for that year, and resumed his large practice at the bar. To the parliament of November 1588 Snagge was returned for Bedford town, and was chosen speaker of the House of Commons (12 Nov. 1588). Parliament was prorogued on 4 Feb. 1588–9, but Snagge continued to hold the office until the dissolution on 28 March 1589–90. In 1590 he was advanced to the dignity of queen's serjeant. He died in 1592, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. He was buried at Marston-Morteyne, where is a handsome canopied monument to his memory, with recumbent effigies in marble of himself and his wife. By his marriage with a coheiress of Thomas Dikons, Snagge acquired the large estates of the Reynes family in Bedfordshire. His eldest son, Sir Thomas Snagge of Marston-Morteyne, was elected member for Bedford county in November 1588, was one of the first knights made by James I on his accession in 1603, and was high sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1607.
T. W. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Stone, Benjamin

​STONE, BENJAMIN (fl. 1630–1642), sword-maker, was an enterprising cutler of London who about 1630 established on Hounslow Heath, on the site now occupied by Bedfont powder-mills, the earliest English sword factory of which anything is known. He employed English workmen under the direction of foreigners, probably Flemings, paying by the piece and finding workshops, tools, &c., as usual in the trade until recent times. His grindstones and polishing wheels were turned by a water-wheel, this being in all probability an innovation. His establishment was on a scale that enabled him to produce about a thousand swords a month. His blades were of exceptional quality. On one occasion three of his blades which were falsely represented by a rival cutler to be of Toledo manufacture were purchased by Robert South, formerly cutler by appointment to James I, who, despite fifty years' experience, did not detect the false pretence. Stone's persistent condemnation of the work of contemporary London cutlers converted them into personal and bitter enemies. Their opposition and the remote site of his factory, combined with the popular belief in the superiority of imported blades, served in course of time to ruin Stone's business, and in 1636 he was in danger of arrest for debt. He appealed to the king for protection and assistance, and was appointed blade-maker to the office of ordnance. Subsequently, upon the occasion of a contract for four thousand swords being given to his rivals, Stone attempted to claim a monopoly of supply to the royal stores; but the influence of Captain William Legge [q. v.], master of the armoury, was cast against him, and the attempt failed. The withdrawal of Charles I and the flight from London of the chief officers of ordnance, with the rest of the nobility, left Stone without protectors and with a stigma of ‘malignancy’ upon him in the midst of enemies. The parliamentary party was too poor to encourage the making of new swords, and when Waller and Hesilrige in 1643–4 appealed for two hundred horsemen's swords of Stone's Hounslow make, the appeal was met by public subscription in kind. After the civil war the factory passed to other hands, and was removed to a point lower down the river. The industry languished and ceased in the eighteenth century. The Duke of Newcastle testified both in his ‘Truth of the Sword’ and his ‘Country Captain’ (act i. scene 2) to the surpassing excellence of Hounslow blades, at a time when the mill was probably under Stone's management.
[State Papers, Domestic; Ordnance Office, Declared Accounts and Journal (Harl. MS. 429); Glover's Survey of the Hundred of Isleworth.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Stone, Frank

​STONE, FRANK (1800–1859), painter, born at Manchester on 22 Aug. 1800, was the son of a cotton-spinner. He was brought up in his father's calling, and did not turn his attention to art until the age of twenty-four. He is said ‘never to have studied under any master or even to have received a drawing lesson at school.’ After seven years' application he came to London in 1831. His earliest work consisted in making pencil drawings for Charles Heath (1785–1848) [q. v.], at five guineas each, to be engraved by him in the ‘Book of Beauty.’ On 11 Feb. 1833 he was elected an associate exhibitor of the Watercolour Society, and in 1837 was represented for the first time at the Royal Academy exhibition by a couple of portraits in oil. His early works were extensively engraved. They were distinguished by ‘a pretty sentimentality’ which made them popular. Among them may be mentioned ‘The Last Appeal,’ ‘Cross Purposes,’ ‘The Old, Old Story,’ and the companion pictures ‘Impending Mate’ and ‘Mated.’ In 1841 he was awarded a premium of fifty guineas by the British Institution, and on 13 June 1842 was elected a member of the Water-colour Society, but resigned his membership on 17 July 1846.
Among London writers and artists Stone had many acquaintances. He was the associate of Thackeray, and of the poets Campbell and Rogers, and the intimate friend of Dickens. From 1845 to 1851 he resided at Tavistock House, Tavistock Square (afterwards the dwelling of Dickens). He frequently assisted Dickens in theatricals, and in 1847 he accompanied the novelist in a troupe of amateur players on a tour in the north. Dickens made Sairey Gamp describe Stone as ‘a fine-looking, portly gentleman, with a face like an amiable full moon’ (Forster, Life of Dickens, ii. 353). In November 1848 he assisted in illustrating the ‘Haunted Man.’ In the same year he exhibited at the Royal Academy ‘Christ and the Sisters of Bethany,’ and two years later a ‘Scene from the Tempest,’ the first of several Shakespearean subjects. In 1851 he was chosen an associate of the Royal Academy. During the last five or six years of his life his work acquired more breadth and simplicity and showed less trace of drawing-room sentiment. Among his later productions may be mentioned ‘The Gardener's Daughter’ and several sea studies. Stone died in London on 18 Nov. 1859, and was buried in Highgate cemetery. He was father of the well-known artist, Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A.
Stone seldom attempted large or complicated compositions, preferring groups of two or three figures which he could paint with careful attention to matters of technique. The characteristics of his art have been described as ‘a combination of technical elaboration with a definite predilection for beauty of physical type.’ With such tendencies he was necessarily popular, but his most successful work was perhaps not his best.
E. I. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Stone, Gilbert

​STONE, GILBERT (d. 1417?), mediæval letter-writer, born at Stone in Staffordshire, whence he took his name, is said by Brian Twyne [q. v.] to have been educated at Oxford, where he devoted himself to the study of civil law, to have been made chancellor successively to Robert Wyville (d. 1375), bishop of Salisbury; Ralph Ergham (d. 1400), bishop of Bath and Wells; and to Richard Clifford, bishop of Worcester, who was translated to London in 1407. The defective registers afford no confirmation of these statements, but in 1384 Richard II confirmed Stone in possession of the prebend of Buckland Denham in Wells Cathedral, and early in the fifteenth century he held the prebend of Ynge or Eigne in Hereford Cathedral, which he resigned in 1414. On 9 March 1411–12 he was collated to the prebend of Portpoole in St. Paul's Cathedral, and he ​died probably in 1417, when his successor in that office was appointed (Le Neve, ed. Hardy, i. 534, ii. 427). Stone is said to have written 123 letters, some of which are extant in the collections of Sir Thomas Bodley and Richard James in the Bodleian Library (Bernard, Cat. MSS. Angliæ, p. 261). One addressed while he was chancellor of Worcester to Thomas Arundel [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, is extant in Cotton MS. Vitellius E. x. 121. Two others are in Harleian MS. 431, f. 25 a b.. Richard James, in his ‘Iter Lancastre’ (Chetham Soc. p. 6), says: ‘Gilbert Stone, being for ye time a trimme man of his penne, was sollicited by ye monks there [i.e. at Holywell] to write their founders or saints life; when he requested summe memories of him, they had none at all. Wherefore in a letter of his, he says “tis no matter, for he would write them notwithstanding a fine legend after y$^e$ manner of Thomas of Canterburye.”’
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. pp. 693–4; Twyne's Antiquitatis Acad. Oxoniensis Apologia, 1620; authorities cited.]
A. F. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Baxter, William Edward

​BAXTER, WILLIAM EDWARD (1825–1890), traveller and author, born on 24 June 1825 at Dundee, was the eldest son of Edward Baxter of Kincaldrum in Forfar, a Dundee merchant, by his first wife, Euphemia, daughter of William Wilson, a wool merchant of Dundee. Sir David Baxter [q. v.] was his uncle. He was educated at the high school of Dundee and at Edinburgh University. On leaving the university he entered his father's counting-house, and some years afterwards became partner in the firm of Edward Baxter & Co. In 1870 that firm was dissolved, and he became senior partner of the new firm of W. E. Baxter & Co. He found time for much foreign travel and interested himself in politics. In March 1855 he was returned to parliament for the Montrose burghs in the liberal interest, in succession to Joseph Hume [q. v.], retaining his seat until 1885. After refusing office several times he became secretary to the admiralty in December 1868, in Gladstone's first administration, and distinguished himself by his reforms and retrenchments. In 1871 he resigned this office, on becoming joint secretary of the treasury, a post which he resigned in August 1873, in consequence of differences between him and the chancellor of the exchequer, Robert Lowe. He was sworn of the privy council on 24 March 1873. Baxter continued to carry on business as a foreign merchant in Dundee till his death. He died on 10 Aug. 1890 at Kincaldrum.
In November 1847 he married Janet, eldest daughter of J. Home Scott, a solicitor of Dundee. By her he had two sons and five daughters.
Besides many lectures Baxter published:
* 'Impressions of Central and Southern Europe,' London, 1850, 8vo.
* 'The Tagus and the Tiber, or Notes of Travel in Portugal, Spain, and Italy, London, 1852, 2 vols. 8vo.
* 'America and the Americans,' London, 1855, 8vo.
* 'Hints to Thinkers, or Lectures for the Times,' London, 1860, 8vo.
[Dublin Univ. Mag. 1876, lxxxviii. 652-64 (with portrait); Dundee Advertiser, 11 Aug. 1890; Official Return of Members of Parl.; Foster's Scottish M.P.'s; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.; Burke's Landed Gentry.]
E. I. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Battenberg, Prince Henry of

​BATTENBERG, Prince HENRY of. [See Henry Maurice, 1868–1896.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Manners, Robert (d.1355?)

1904 Errata appended.
​MANNERS, Sir ROBERT (d. 1355?), constable of Norham, is said to have been son of a certain William de Manners who died in 1349. He obtained a grant of land in Berrington, Northumberland, in 1329, and petitioned the king for Learmouth on account of his own and his father's services in the Scottish wars in 1331. A curious letter of 1333 from the Bishop of Durham to the council, referring to his jurisdiction over Norham, mentions Manners as constable, and seems to mark an earlier date than 1345, which is usually assigned to his appointment. Manners was a rough border soldier. He was ordered to give up two hostages whom he illegally detained in 1333. In 1&40 he was M.P. for Northumberland, and in 1341 he aided Lord Grey of Werk in stopping a raid of the Earl of Sutherland. In 1342 he was allowed to embattle Etal in Northumberland, and thus founded the influence of his family in that district. He arranged the truce with David Brjace the same year, and when the Scots invaded England, in alliance with the French, in 1346, he took part in the battle of Neville's Cross. He seems to have died in 1355, as in that year the custody of Etal was given to the Lethams, who were afterwards, in the interest of the heir, accused of wasting it. Sir Robert's wives were Margaret and a certain Ada. The pedigree is differently stated, possibly because of the two seats of the family, but it is certain that his heir was John Manners, who was born in 1355. Possibly John was a grandson of Sir Robert.
The second Sir Robert Manners (1408–1461) was probably grandson of Sir John Manners and great-great-grandson of the first Sir Robert. He was a justice of the peace for Norhamshire in 1438, when he succeeded to the family property, was sheriff of Northumberland in 1454, and M.P. for Northumberland in 1459. He died about 1461, and was buried in the church of the Austin Friars, London. He married Johanna, daughter of Sir Robert Ogle, and sister of Robert, first lord Ogle [q. v.], and by her, who died in 1488, left four sons: 1. Sir Robert Manners, Sheriff of Northumberland in 1463, 1465, when he was knighted, and 1485, who married Eleanor, daughter of Lord Roos, and so brought that title into the Manners family; he was grandfather of Thomas Manners, first earl of Rutland [q. v.] 2. John Manners (d. 1492). 3. Gilbert Manners, a retainer of the Earl of Warwick. 4. Thomas Manners of Etal.
[Raine's North Durham, pp. 211 , &c.; Cal. of Docs, relating to Scotland, 1307–1509; Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges, vol. i.; Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, ed. Hardy (Rolls Series), vols. iii. and iv.; Nichols's Leicestershire, ii. 41.]
W. A. J. A.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.194 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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