OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Laeghaire

Laeghaire (2) (Lagerie, phonetically Leary), pagan monarch of Ireland, reigning at Tara in the county of Meath. In the fifth year of his reign St. Patrick, having spent the winter in the counties of Down and Antrim, in the spring determined to hold his Easter festival near Laeghaire's palace. The monarch, surrounded by his nobles and his Druid priests, saw with wonder and rage the distant light of the Christian paschal fire which was to quench the lights of heathendom, and rode over in force to Ferta-fer-Feic to expel the intruder. But mollified by the stranger's address, or frightened by his words of power, he allowed the Christian mission to be established. We can hardly believe that he continued a persecutor while such progress was made in the spread of the Gospel around him and in his own family. His queen may perhaps have become a Christian; his two daughters, Fedhelm the ruddy and Eithne the fair, were certainly converted and numbered among the saints. Several of his descendants (Reeves, St. Adamnan, 173) are beatified.
He probably died a pagan. The Four Masters give the date as 458, but 463 is more likely (Ann. Tig., eo an., ap. O'Conor, Rer. Hib. Script. iv. 111). He reigned probably 35 years. His body was carried to and buried at Tara, in the S.E. side of the external rampart, with his weapons upon him, and his face turned towards the Lagenians, as if still fighting against them. Vitae S. Patricii, ap. Colgan, Tr. Thaum. pass.; Lanigan, Ch. Hist. Ir. i. c. 5; Moore, Hist. Ir. i. c. 10; O'Hanlon, Ir. Saints, i. 163 seq.; Nennius, Hist. c. 59, ap. Mon. Hist. Brit. pt. ii. 72; Keating, Gen. Hist. Ir. B. ii. pp. 325 seq.; Four Mast. by O'Donovan, i. 144–145 n. g; Wills, Ill. Ir. i. 60; Skene, Celt. Scot. ii. 100 seq. 428 seq.; Todd, St. Patrick, 6 seq.; Joyce, Irish Names of Places, d ser. 230–231.
[J.G.]
# Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Lampetius

Lampetius.
[EUCHITES.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Croll, Francis

​CROLL, FRANCIS (1826?–1854), line engraver, was born at Musselburgh about 1826. At a very early age his talent for drawing attracted the notice of the Scottish sculptors, Alexander and John Ritchie, who urged his friends to cultivate it. He was accordingly articled to Thomas Dobbie of Edinburgh, an excellent draughtsman and naturalist, but less known as an engraver, under whose tuition Croll made good progress in drawing, but not so much in engraving. The death of his master, however, before the completion of his apprenticeship led to his being placed for two years to study line engraving under Robert Charles Bell [q. v.], and during the same time he attended the schools of the Royal Scottish Academy, then under the direction of Sir William Allan [q. v.], from whose instruction and advice he derived much benefit. His earlier works were some plates of animals for Stephens's ‘Book of the Farm,’ some portraits for ‘Hogg's Weekly Instructor,’ and a small plate from James Drummond's picture of ‘The Escape of Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh.’ In 1852 he executed for the ‘Art Journal’ an engraving of ‘The Tired Soldier,’ after the picture by Frederick Goodall in the Vernon Gallery. He also engraved for the Royal Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland one of a series of designs by John Faed to illustrate ‘The Cottar's Saturday Night’ of Robert Burns. During the progress of this plate he was attacked by heart disease, and soon after its completion a career of much promise was closed by his death in Edinburgh, 12 Feb. 1854, at the early age of twenty-seven.
[Scotsman, 18 Feb. 1854; Art Journal, 1854, p. 119.]
R. E. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Croker, Temple Henry

​CROKER, TEMPLE HENRY (1730?–1790?), miscellaneous writer, was a native of Cork. He was admitted a foundation scholar of Westminster School in 1743, at the age of thirteen, and in 1746 was elected to a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge; but he removed to Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated (B.A. 1750, M.A. 1760). He was appointed chaplain to the Earl of Hillsborough, and in August 1769 he obtained the rectory of Igtham, Kent, which he vacated in 1773, probably from pecuniary embarrassments, for he figures among the bankrupts of that year. Afterwards he became rector of St. John's, Capisterre, St. Christopher's, in the West Indies, where he published, under the title, ‘Where am I? How came I here? What are my wants? What are my duties?’ four sermons, Basseterre [1790], 4to.
His other works are:
* ‘Orlando Furioso,’ in Italian and English, with a portrait engraved by R. Strange, 2 vols. London, 1755, 4to.
* ‘Bower detected as an Historian, or his omissions and perversions of facts in favour of Popery demonstrated by comparing the three volumes of his History with the first volume of the French History of the Popes [by F. Brays] now translating,’ London, 1758, 8vo.
* ‘The Satires of Lodovico Ariosto,’ translated into English verse by the Rev. Mr. H-rt-n and T. H. Croker, London, 1759, 8vo.
* ‘Experimental Magnetism; or the truth of Mr. Masson's discoveries in that branch of natural philosophy approved and ascertained,’ London, 1761, 8vo.
* ‘The complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,’ 3 vols. London, 1764–6, fol. In preparing this work he had the assistance of several other persons, but he himself wrote all the theological, philological, and critical articles.
[Welch's Alumni Westmon. ed. Phillimore, pp. 327, 337, 339; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Oxford Graduates (1851), p. 162; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn); Hasted's Kent (1782), ii. 249; Gent. Mag. xxxix. 415, xliii. 416.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Crolly, William

​CROLLY, WILLIAM, D.D. (1780–1849), catholic archbishop of Armagh, was born at Ballykilbeg, co. Down, on 8 June 1780, and received his education at a grammar school kept by Dr. Nelson, a unitarian, and Mr. Doran, a catholic. In 1801 he entered Maynooth; he was ordained priest in 1806, and for six years he was a professor in the college. In 1812 he was appointed parish priest of Belfast, a position rendered delicate by the local prejudices against catholicism. It is stated that during the first seven years of his ministry he received one thousand converts into the Roman church. On 1 May 1825 he was consecrated bishop of Down and Connor.
He was translated to the archiepiscopal see of Armagh and the primacy of Ireland by propaganda on 7 April 1835. He was one of the commissioners of charitable bequests, and in accepting that office, in conjunction with Dr. Murray and Dr. Denvir, he incurred a large share of odium, from which, however, he never shrank, notwithstanding that the opposition against him was led by O'Connell in person. He died at Drogheda on 6 April 1849, and was buried in the catholic cathedral of Armagh.
His biography, by the Rev. George Crolly (Dublin, 1852, 8vo), contains numerous anecdotes illustrative of the times in which he lived.
[Shirley's Cat. of the Library at Lough Fea, p. 81; Brady's Episcopal Succession, i. 232, 274; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography, p. 105; Gent. Mag. new ser. xxxi. 539.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clagget, Charles

​CLAGGET, CHARLES (1740?–1820?), musician, a native of Waterford, was about 1766 leader of the band at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. Ten years later he was in London, where he patented (7 Dec.) the earliest of the numerous inventions which made his name famous. This was an ingenious, if impracticable, system of constructing the finger-boards of violins and other stringed instruments, whereby the patentee claimed that it would be almost impossible to play ​out of tune. On 16 Aug. 1788, Clagget patented: 1, a new instrument called the teliochordon; 2, a new method of constructing the keys of keyed instruments; 3, a method of preserving the tone of strings by protecting them with a parchment covering; 4, the construction of glass or enamelled keys; 5, a celestina stop in which the tone was produced by the scraping of silk strings; 6, 'uniting two French horns in such a manner that the mouthpiece may be applied to either of them instantaneously as the music may require;' 7, newly constructed tuning-forks; 8, an instrument consisting of a number of tuning-forks mounted on sound-boxes and set in vibration by keys; 9, a new kind of tuning-key; 10, a better method of fitting the sound-post of a violin to its place.
About this time Clagget settled at No. 16, Greek Street, Soho, where he opened a 'musical museum,' in which he exhibited and sold his various inventions. He constructed a 'teliochordon' stop for the royal harpsichord, which was delivered (as he informed the public in a long description of this 'harmonizer of musical instruments,' as he calls it) at Buckingham Palace on 17 Dec. 1790. About 1791 he exhibited his musical instruments at the Hanover Square Rooms. In the following year Haydn, who was then in London, called at Greek Street and examined Clagget's inventions, as to the value of which he testified in a letter which appeared in the 'Morning Herald' for 27 Apnl. On 31 Oct. 1793 he gave what he called an 'attic concert' at the King*s Arms, Comhill, at which was delivered a 'discourse on musick,' which was published with a portrait of Clagget. After 1795 Clagget's name disappears from 'Kent's Directory,' and no further trace of him is found; he is said to have died in 1820. Clagget wrote a few songs, and published an account of his musical inventions. About 1760 there were two 'Messrs. Clagget,' who published violin and guitar music in Edinburgh, and a little later there lived in Great Hart Street, Covent Garden, a musician named Walter Clagget, who was a performer on the violoncello and viol da gamba, and published some music for stringed instruments and harpsichord. It is possible that these musicians were related to Charles Clagget, but biographical details of them are very meagre.
[Grove's Dict. of Music, i.; Abridgments of Specifications relating to Patents for Musical Instruments, 1694-1866, 11, 21; Clagget's Description of the Teliochordon Stop; Pohl's Mozart und Haydn in London, i. 52, ii. 194; Baptie's Musical Biography; Brit. Mus. Music Cat; Cat. of the Boyar Coll. of Music.]
W. B. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clapham, Samuel

​CLAPHAM, SAMUEL (1755–1830), divine, born at Leeds in 1755, was educated by his father in his native town, and at Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1778 and M.A. in 1784 (Graduati Cantab. edit. 1856, 76). He became curate of Yarm, Yorkshire, in 1790, and vicar of Great Ouseburn, in the same county, in 1797. As a remuneration for his abridgment of Bishop Pretyman’s ‘Elements of Christian Theology,’ that prelate obtained for him the vicarage of Christchurch, Hampshire, in 1802 (Biog. Dict. of Living Authors, pp. 63, 421). In 1806 he was instituted to the rectory of Gussage St. Michael, Dorsetshire. He died at Sidmouth on 1 June 1830 (Gent. Mag. c. (i.) 646).
Besides numerous occasional discourses he published: 1. Abridgment of Bishop Pretyman’s ‘Elements of Theology,’ 1802. 2. ‘Sermons selected and abridged, chiefly from minor authors,’ 3 vols. 1803–11, 5th edit. 2 vols. Lond. 1830. 3. ‘Practical Sermons on several important subjects,’ 2nd edit. Lond. 1804, 8vo, 3rd edit. 2 vols. Lond. 1808, 8vo. 4. A translation of Massillon’s ‘Charges’ under the assumed name of Theophilus St. John, LLB., 1805 and 1806. 5. ‘Sermons selected from the works of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Clarke,’ in opposition to the tenets of Methodism and Calvinism, with some account of his life, 1806. 6. ‘English Grammar taught by examples rather than by rules of Syntax,’ 1810. 7. ‘Prayers selected from the several writings of Jeremy Taylor,’ 1816. 8. ‘A collection of the several Points of Sessions’ Law, alphabetically arranged,’ 2 vols. Lond. 1818. 9. ‘The Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, illustrated; containing an explication of the phraseology incorporated with the text,’ 1818.
[Authorities cited above; also Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Butterworth's Law Cat. p. 45; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 728.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clanny, William Reid

​CLANNY, WILLIAM REID, M.D. (1776–1860), medical writer and inventor of a safety-lamp, was born in 1776 at Bangor, co. Down, Ireland. He completed his medical education at Edinburgh, and served as assistant surgeon in the navy, being present in the action at Copenhagen. Leaving the navy he graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1803, and after a short residence at Durham settled at Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, where he practised medicine till his death on 10 Jan. 1850.
Clanny's medical writings were unimportant. His claim to remembrance rests on his efforts to diminish the loss of life from explosions in collieries. Without any very great knowledge of chemistry he conceived the idea of insulating a candle by enclosing it in a metal lamp, with water chambers above and below it, through the lower of which air should be forced by bellows, and from the upper of which the surplus air should be expelled by the same action. This lamp was completed in 1812, and successfully tried in the Harrington Mill pit, a very fiery mine, on 16 Oct. and 20 Nov. 1815. A paper by Clanny was read before the Royal Society on 20 May 1813, 'On the Means of procuring a Steady Light in Coal Mines without the Danger of Explosion' (Phil. Trans. ciii. 200). He claimed that the gases might explode within his lamp without communicating the explosion externally. No details of experiments are given, and the lamp was exceedingly cumbersome; nevertheless considerable credit is due to Clanny, which he was not slow to claim. Sir H. Davy's first paper on the subject was read on 9 Nov. 1816, after seeing Clanny's experiments with his lamp. In 1816 and 1817 he received from the Society of Arts their large gold and silver medals for modifications of his original lamp. He afterwards modified his lamp so as to bring it down to a weight of thirty-four ounces, and in this form it was practically used in several collieries in Durham and Northumberland. A purse of gold, ​with a silver salver, was presented to him at the Athenæum, Sunderland, on 3 Feb. 1848, by the Marquis of Londonderry and others, in recognition of his inventions. Incomplete lists of Clanny’s writings are given in the ‘Royal Society’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers,’ and in Dechambre’s ‘Dict. Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales,’ 1st ser. vol. xvii
[Gent. Mag, 1850, xxxiii. 436; Clanny's writings, especially Priority of Invention of the Safety Lamp, Gateshead, 1844, in British Museum.]
G. T. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clapham, David

1904 Errata appended.
​CLAPHAM, DAVID (d. 1551), translator, eldest son and heir of John Clapham, the fourth son of Thomas Clapham of Beamesley, Yorkshire, was probably born in that county. Wood assumes that, ‘after he had spent some time in trivials,’ he ‘did solely addict his mind to the study of the civil law’ at Oxford, though it does not appear whether he took a degree in that faculty. It is certain, however that he was a member of the university of Cambridge, where he proceeded bachelor of the civil law in 1533. He practised as a rector in the ecclesiastical courts at Doctors’ Commons, and his abilities brought him into favour with Sir William Cecil, secretary of state to Edward VI, and other noted men. Bale, who knew him well, tells us that ‘præter legis peritiam, in qua plurimum excellebat, in diversis eruditus fuit’ (De Scriptoribus, i. 717). He died at his house, near Doctors’ Commons, on 14 July 1551, and was buried in the church of St. Faith, under St. Paul’s Cathedral. He left several children by Joan, his wife. Thomas, his eldest son, was for some time seated at Helpston, Northamptonshire.
He translated from the Latin of Cornelius Agrippa into English:
* ‘A Treatise of Nobility,' London, 1542, 4to.
* ‘The Excellency of Womenkind,’ London, 1542, 8vo.
* ‘The Commendation of Matrimony,' London, 1545, 8vo. Dedicated to Gregory Cromwell, son of Lord Cromwell.
[Tanner’s Bibl. Brit.; Wood’s Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), i. 191; Cooper’s Athenæ Cantab. i. 105; Ame's Typogr. Antiq. (Herbert), 449; Cat. Libb. Impress. Bibl. Bodl. (1843), 1. 28; Cal. of State Papers (1547-80), 21; Bridge’s Northamptonshire, ii. 515; Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, 127; Addit. MS. 5865, f. 195 b.]
T. C.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.66 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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| 371 | i | 21 | Clapham, David: for Beamesley read Beamsley |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Fleming, Daniel

​FLEMING, Sir DANIEL (1633–1701), antiquary, eldest son of William Fleming of Coniston, North Lancashire, and Rydal, Westmoreland, by Alice, eldest daughter of Roger Kirkby of Kirkby, Lancashire, was born on 25 July 1633, and educated at Queen's College, Oxford, which he entered in 1650, and Gray's Inn. By the death of his father in 1653 he inherited considerable estates in the neighbourhood of Rydal, for which he paid heavy fines to the parliament. At the Restoration he was appointed sheriff of Cumberland. He was a constant correspondent of Secretary Williamson, and his letters in the Record Office, some of which have been calendared, afford a lively picture of the state of affairs in Cumberland and Westmoreland during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and exhibit him as a staunch supporter of the church of England, and enemy alike of the protestant dissenter and the Roman catholic. He regretted the release of George Fox in 1666 as likely to discourage the justices from acting against the quakers, and credited to the full the reports of their burning ‘steeple houses.’ He was knighted on 15 May 1681 at Windsor, and in the parliament of 1685–1687 sat as member for Cockermouth, in which character he opposed the declaration of indulgence. He occupied his leisure in antiquarian researches, chiefly in connection with his native county, and left some manuscript collections, which have recently been edited for the Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian Society under the title ‘Description of the County of Westmoreland,’ by Sir G. F. Duckett, bart., London, 1882, 8vo. He died in 1701. He is said by Wotton (Baronetage, iv. 120) to have been, ‘not without grateful acknowledgment, a considerable assistant to the learned annotator of Camden's “Britannia.”’ No such acknowledgment, however, is to be found in the preface to Gibson's edition of Camden, which must be the one referred to. It was at Fleming's suggestion that Thomas Brathwaite left his collection of upwards of three hundred coins of the Roman era to the university of Oxford. Fleming married in 1655 Barbara, eldest daughter of Sir Henry Fletcher of Hutton, Cumberland, who was slain at Rowton Heath on the side of the king in 1645. His eldest son, William, created a baronet 4 Oct. 1705, died in 1736, and was succeeded by his brother George, bishop of Carlisle, who is separately noticed.
J. M. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Fleming, Christopher

​FLEMING, CHRISTOPHER (1800–1880), surgeon, was born at Boardstown in co. Westmeath on 14 July 1800, and in 1821 graduated B.A. in the university of Dublin. He became a licentiate of the Irish College of Surgeons in 1824, and a member in 1826. In 1838 he took an M.D. degree in the university of Dublin, but did not obtain a hospital appointment till 1851, when he became surgeon to the House of Industry Hospitals. In 1856 he was elected president of the College of Surgeons of Ireland, and in 1877 collected some papers which he had previously published in medical journals into a volume entitled ‘Clinical Records of Injuries and Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs.’ His only other work is ‘Remarks on the Application of Chloroform to Surgical purposes,’ Dublin, 1851, and both are without permanent value. He married a Miss Radcliff, and had seven children, of whom a son and a daughter survived him. He retired from practice a few years before his death, and went to live at Donnybrook, near Dublin, where he died 30 Dec. 1880.
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Fleming, Alexander

​FLEMING, ALEXANDER, M.D. (1824–1875), was born in 1824 at Edinburgh, where he studied medicine and graduated M.D. in 1844. His chief work was his college essay on the 'Physiological and Medicinal Properties of Aconitum Napellus,' Lond. 1845, which led to the introduction of a tincture of aconite of uniform strength known as Fleming's tincture. Having spent some years at Cork as professor of materia medica in the Queen's College, he went in 1858 to Birmingham, where he held the honorary office of physician to the Queen's Hospital until his retirement through ill-health in 1873. He died at Brixton, London, on 21 Aug. 1875. Besides the works above mentioned, he published two introductory addresses and two papers in the 'Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science' (on measles of the pig, and on the classification of medicines).
[Brit. Med. Journ. ii. 1875.]
C. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Fleetwood, Thomas

​FLEETWOOD, THOMAS (1661–1717), drainer of Marton or Martin Meer, eldest son of Sir Richard Fleetwood, bart., of Calwick, Staffordshire, who survived him, was born in 1661, and having married the daughter and heiress of Christopher Bannister, esq., of Bank Hall, Lancashire, he purchased from the Mainwarings, about 1690, the manor of Marton Grange, or Marton Sands, in the same county. His land adjoined a large lake called Marton (or Martin) Meer, occupying an area of 3,132 acres, with a circumference of about eighteen miles, and this he boldly resolved to drain. Having first obtained from the neighbouring proprietors a lease of their rights in the meer for the duration of three lives and thirty-one years, he procured in 1692 an act of parliament allowing him to proceed, and commenced operations in the following year. On these extensive works as many as two thousand labourers ​were sometimes engaged at the same time. The result was fairly successful for about sixty years, but in 1755, five years after the lease had expired, the sea broke in, almost destroying all that had been done. In 1781 draining operations were resumed by Thomas Eccleston of Scarisbrick, Lancashire; but it was not until after the middle of the nineteenth century that Sir Peter Hesketh succeeded in triumphing over every difficulty, converting this large tract of fertile land, traversed by good roads, to profitable use. Fleetwood died 22 April 1717, and was buried in the church of North Meols, Lancashire, where there is a monument to his memory eulogising his enterprise and spirit. His only daughter and heiress, Henrietta Maria, married Thomas Legh, younger brother of Peter Legh, esq., of Lyme in Cheshire (Earwaker, East Cheshire, ii. 301).
C. H. D.