OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Toole, Adam Duff

​O'TOOLE, ADAM DUFF (d. 1327), reputed heretic, son of Walter Duff, a member of a tribe occupying a mountainous district in the county of Wicklow, appears to have adopted after 1320 views similar to those afterwards held by Wiclifs followers. He was prosecuted, and, whatever may have been his real opinions, 'his offence was aggravated by a charge of horrid and senseless blasphemy' (Leland). It was said that he denied the incarnation and the doctrine of the Trinity, aspersed the character of the Blessed Virgin, denied the resurrection of the dead, said the scriptures were fables, and that the apostolic see was guilty of falsehood. Being tried for these offences, he was found guilty and pronounced a heretic and a blasphemer, and ordered to be burnt alive. The sentence was carried out in 1327, when he was publicly burnt at Le Hogges, a mound which was situated near the site of the church of St. Andrew in Dublin, the name being derived from the Norwegian haugr, a mound.
[The Chartularies of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, Rolls edit. ii. 366; Leland's Hist, of Ireland, i. 287; Holinshed's Chronicle, s. a. 1327; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography.]
T. O.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Shaughnessy, William (1674-1744)

​O'SHAUGHNESSY, WILLIAM (1674–1744), major-general in the French service, son of Roger O'Shaughnessy and his wife Helen, daughter of Conor MacDonogh O'Brien of Ballynee, co. Meath, was born in 1674, and, on the death of his father in July 1690, became the head of the O'Shaughnessys of Gort, co. Galway. The year previous, when a boy of fifteen, he became captain of foot and afterwards acting-colonel in King James's army. He went to France early in 1690 with the regiment of the Irish brigade commanded by Daniel O'Brien, afterwards third Viscount Clare [see O'Brien, Daniel, first Viscount], in which he was appointed captain by Louis XIV on 10 July 1691. He served in Italy in 1692; was present at the battle of Marsaglia, in Piedmont, in 1693; and in 1696 witnessed the close of the operations at the back of the Alps by the siege of Valenza, where he became commandant of the third battalion of his regiment, and was ​appointed to the army of the Meuse. When the 2nd and 3rd battalions of Clare were 'reformed' in 1698, he was appointed captain of the grenadiers of the battalion which was kept up from 1 April 1698. With his regiment, one of the most famous of the Irish brigade, he served in Germany in the campaigns of 1701–2; was present at the reduction of Kehl and the first battle of Hochstedt in 1703; and at the great battle there, otherwise known as Blenheim, the year after. In 1705 he served with the army of the Moselle. In 1706 he fought at Ramillies, and became major of Clare on 4 July, upon the death of Major John O Carroll, and lieutenant-colonel on 12 Sept. He was with his regiment in Flanders in 1707; at Oudenarde in 1708; at Malplaquet in 1709; at the defence of the lines of Arleux, Denain, Douay, Bouchain, and Quesnoy in 1710–12. Subsequently he served in the campaigns in Germany, including the sieges of Landau and Freiberg. He became a brigadier-general on 3 April 1721; was employed with the army of the Rhine in 1733, and was present at the siege of Kehl; served with the army of the Rhine in the campaigns of 1734–5, attaining the rank of major-general (marechal-de-camp) 1 Aug. 1734; served with the army in Flanders in 1742; commanded at Cambray during the campaign of 1743; and on 1 Nov. of that year was appointed to the command at Gravelines, where he died, without issue, on 2 Jan. 1744, aged 70, being then the oldest Irish major-general in the French service.
[O'Callaghan's Irish Brigades in the Service of France, Glasgow, 1870, pp. 26–7, 38–46, 336–7.]
H. M. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Toole, Bryan

​O'TOOLE, BRYAN (d. 1825), lieutenant-colonel, entered as cornet in a regiment of hussars raised by Frederick, baron Hompesch, in 1792, and served with it, under the Duke of Brunswick, in the first campaign of that year in Champagne, including the taking of Verdun and the attack on Thionville. Next he was present at the battle of Jemappes, and afterwards under the Prince of Condé at Neerwinden, at the blockades of Condé and Maubeuge, and battle of Charleroi. He then joined the army under the Duke of York, and commanded a squadron of Hompesch at Boxtel and Nimeguen, and in the winter retreat of 1794-5 from the Waal to Bremen. On arriving in England he was appointed captain-lieutenant in one of the regiments of the Irish brigade, then in British raj, and on 25 March 1796 was made captain in the Hompesch hussars, with which he went to the West Indies. Frederick, baron Hompesch, had then two corps in British pay — one hussars, the other rifles (see Parl. Ret. of Foreign Corps, 1796). O'Toole served with the Hompesch hussars in San Domingo, and returned home with the skeleton remains of the corps in 1797 (cf. G. R. Gleig, The Hussar of the authentic story of a soldier of the corps, afterwards an inmate of Chelsea). O'Toole was appointed to a troop in a new corps, Hompesch's mounted riflemen, with which he served in Ireland in 1798, and was ? resent at Vinegar Hill and Ballinahinch. [e was placed on half-pay when the corps was disbanded in 1802. He was brought in as captain in the 39th foot in 1803 ; was aide-de-camp to Major-general Broderick in the expedition to Naples in 1805, and to Sir Gralbraith Lowry Cole [q. v.] in the expedition to Calabria and battle of Maida in 1806 ; was made brevet major in 1808 ; was present as major of a light battalion at the capture of Ischia in 1809 ; and was major commanding the Calabrian free corps, in British pay, dur- ing Murat's threatened invasion of Sicily in 1810. He resigned his command to accompany the 39th to the Peninsula as captain, and was appointed major in the 2nd Portuguese cacadores, with which he was present at Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, Salamanca, capture of Madrid, and siege of Burgos and subsequent retreat. On 21 June 1813 he was appointed lieutenant-colonel, and received command of the 7th cacadores in Sir Lowry Cole's division, and was present with it at the battle of Vittoria, blockade of Pampeluna, and the battles in the Pyrenees. During his Peninsular service O'Toole lost the use of one arm. He was placed on half-pay of the Portuguese officers in 1816. He was made OB. on 4 June 1815, and had the gold cross for Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Vittoria, and the Pvrenees. He died at Fairford, co. Wexford, 27 Feb. 1825.
[Army Lists; Gent. Mag. 1825, i. 567-7. For particulars of the campaigns in Sicily and the Peninsula see Bunbury's Narrative of Passages in the late War, and Napier's Peninsular War, revised edit.]
H. M. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Milner, Thomas

​MILNER, THOMAS, M.D. (1719–1797), physician, son of John Milner, a presbyterian minister, was born at Peckham, near London, where his father preached and kept a school famous in literature from the fact that Goldsmith was in 1757 one of its ushers (Forster, Life of Goldsmith). He graduated M.D. at St. Andrews 20 June 1740, and in 1759 was elected physician to St. Thomas's Hospital. He became a licentiate of the College of Physicians 30 Sept. 1760, but in 1762 resigned his physiciancy at St. Thomas's, and settled in Maidstone, where he attained to large practice and used to walk to the parish church every Sunday bearing a gold-headed cane, and followed in linear succession by the three unmarried sisters who lived with him. In 1783 he published in London ‘Experiments and Observations on Electricity,’ a work in which he described some of the effects which an electrical power is capable of producing on conducting substances, similar effects of the same power on electric bodies themselves, and observations on the air, electric repulsion, the electrified cup, and the analogy between electricity and magnetism. He died at Maidstone 13 Sept. 1797, and is buried in All Saints' Church there.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 229; Works.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Milner-Gibson, Thomas

​MILNER-GIBSON, THOMAS (1806–1884), statesman. [See Gibson, Thomas Milner-.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Milo of Gloucester

​MILO of Gloucester. [See Gloucester, Miles de, Earl of Hereford, d. 1143.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Milton, Christopher

​MILTON, Sir CHRISTOPHER (1615–1693), judge, brother of the poet John Milton, being the younger son of John Milton, scrivener [q. v.], by Sarah Jeffrey, his wife, was born in Bread Street, London, November 1615, and educated at St. Paul's School and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted a pensioner on 15 Feb. 1630-1631. The same year he entered the Inner Temple, where, having left the university without a degree, he was called to the bar in 1639. At the outbreak of the civil war he resided at Reading, and by virtue of a commission under the great seal sequestered the estates of parliamentarians in three counties. After the surrender of Reading to the parliament (April 1643), he ‘steered his course according to the motion of the king's army,’ and was in Exeter during Fairfax's siege of that place. On its surrender in the spring of 1646, his town house, the Cross Keys, Ludgate, was sequestered, and he compounded for 80l., a tenth of its value. Only a moiety of the composition, however, was paid by him, and inquiries, apparently ineffectual, were made for estates supposed to belong to him in Suffolk and Berkshire. During the Commonwealth his practice consisted chiefly of composition cases, among them that of his brother's mother-in-law, Mrs. Anne Powell. In November 1660 he was elected a bencher of the Inner Temple, where he was reader in the autumn of 1667. At the date of his brother's death, whose nuncupative will he attested (5 Dec. 1674), he was deputy-recorder of Ipswich. In later life he was, or professed to be, a Roman catholic, and accordingly, though no great lawyer, was raised by James II to the exchequer bench, 26 April 1686, being first invested with the coif (21 April), and knighted (25 April). His tenure of office was equally brief and undistinguished. On 16 April 1687 he was transferred to the common pleas, being dispensed from taking the oaths, and on 6 July 1688 he was discharged as super-annuated, retaining his salary. He died in March 1692-3, and was buried (22 March) in the church of St. Nicholas, Ipswich. Besides his house at Ipswich he had a villa at Rushmere, about two miles from the town. He married, probably in 1638, Thomasine, daughter of William Webber of London, by whom he had issue a son, who died in infancy in March 1639; another, Thomas, sometime deputy-clerk of the crown in chancery; and three daughters, Sarah, Mary, and Catherine.
J. M. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Russel, George

​RUSSEL, GEORGE (1728–1767), poet, son of Christopher Russel of Minorca, was born in that island in 1728. His father, who was born in 1670 and died at Ciuderdale in Minorca in 1729, was a distinguished officer of the 19th regiment of foot, who had served in Flanders and in the wars of Queen Anne. George Russel is said to have been educated at Westminster School. He matriculated from St. Mary Hall, Oxford, on 28 May 1746. In 1750 he graduated B.A. Through the influence of John Boyle, fifth earl of Cork and Orrery [q. v.], with whose son, Hamilton Boyle, he was on familiar terms, he obtained the rectory of Skull (now called Schull), co. Cork, in 1753. There he died in 1767. Russel wrote much verse from 1744 until his death in 1767. In 1769 his remains were published in two volumes in Cork, under the title of ‘The Works of the Rev. George Russel, Rector of Skull, in the Diocese of Cork.’ Among Russel's poems is the popular fable called ‘The Chameleon,’ which is generally attributed to James Merrick [q. v.] Russel's verse is neatly turned and sometimes witty.
D. J. O'D.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Russel, John

​RUSSEL, JOHN (1740?–1817), Scots divine, a native of Moray, was born about 1740. After completing his university education he was appointed parochial teacher at Cromarty, where he remained some years after obtaining license to preach from the presbytery of Chanonry on 21 June 1768. His strictness and severity as a disciplinarian earned for him the name of the ‘hard dominie,’ and, according to Hugh Miller, many of his pupils continued to regard him with ‘dread and hatred’ long after they had become men and women. Hugh Miller relates that a lady, who had experienced his tender mercies in childhood, was so overcome by the sudden appearance of him in a southern pulpit that she fainted away (Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, p. 411). As a preacher he ​was, however, even in Cromarty, a favourite of the majority, being especially effective in enforcing the terrors of the law, and depicting the ‘miseries of the wicked in a future state’ (ib. p. 413). On 30 March 1774 he was ordained minister of the chapel-of-ease, now the high church, Kilmarnock. As a clergyman he did not belie the peculiar reputation he had gained as a schoolmaster. One of the most rigid of sabbatarians, he was accustomed on Sundays to go out, staff in hand, and forcibly turn back—being strong as well as determined—any of his parishioners about to indulge in the sin of Sunday walking; and it is said that at the sound of his heavy cudgel in the streets every one disappeared. His stentorian voice, aided by his dark and gloomy countenance, lent such effect to his fanatical denunciations that few even of his most reckless parishioners listened to him unmoved.
Having been called to the second charge of Stirling on 18 Jan. 1800, Russel demitted his charge at Kilmarnock on the 20th. He died at Stirling on 23 Feb. 1817 in his seventy-seventh year. Russel, who expounded a Calvinism of the narrowest and most forbidding type, published a number of sermons. He has gained immortality through the satire of Robert Burns. He is one of the combatants in the ‘Twa Herds, or the Holy Tulzie;’ ‘Black Jock,’ the state physician of ‘Glowrin Superstition’ in the ‘Epistle to John Goudie;’ ‘the Lord's ain trumpet’ in the ‘Holy Fairy;’ the ‘misca'er of common sense’ in the ‘Ordination;’ and ‘Rumble John’ in the ‘Kirk's Alarm.’
By his wife, Catherine Cunningham, he had a son John, who was minister of Muthill, Perthshire, and a daughter Anne, married to the Rev. William Sheriff of St. Ninians. A volume of the son's sermons was published in 1826, with a memoir by Dr. Chalmers.
T. F. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rushworth, William

​RUSHWORTH or RICHWORTH, WILLIAM (d. 1637), catholic controversialist, was a native of Lincolnshire, and received his education in the English College at Douay, where he went by the name of Charles Ross. He was ordained priest on 29 Sept. 1615, and on 8 March 1617–18 he undertook the office of general prefect, which he resigned on 18 Aug. 1618. Soon afterwards he was sent to the mission in England, where he died in 1637. His anonymous biographer says: ‘He was a man curious in divinity, controversies, mathematicks, and physick, but chiefly delighted in mathematics, and, by the name of Robinson, entertained correspondence with the learned Oughtred.’
He left in manuscript a work which was published under the title of ‘The Dialogves of William Richworth; or, the iudgmend [sic] of common sense in the choise of Religion,’ Paris (John Mestais), 1640 (12mo, pp. 582; reprinted, Paris, 1648, 12mo). Another edition, corrected and enlarged by the Rev. Thomas White, who added a fourth dialogue, is entitled: ‘Rushworth's Dialogues. Or the Judgment of common sence in the choyce of Religion,’ Paris, 1654, 8vo, pp. 280. William Chillingworth wrote: ‘An Answer to some Passages in Rushworth's Dialogues’ which appeared at the end of the ninth edition of his ‘Works,’ London, 1727, fol., and Matthew Poole also replied to Rushworth in ‘The Nullity of the Romish Faith,’ 1667 and 1679. Thomas White published ‘An Apology for Rushworth's Dialogues. Wherein the Exceptions of the Lords Falkland and Digby are answer'd, and the Arts of their commended Daillé discovered,’ Paris, 1654, 8vo; and another vindication of Rushworth appeared in a work entitled ‘Tradidi Vobis; or the Traditionary Conveyance of Faith Cleer'd in the rational way, against the exceptions of a Learned Opponent. By J[ohn] B[elson], Esquire,’ London, 1662, 12mo.
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rushout, John

​RUSHOUT, Sir JOHN (1684–1775), politician, born in 1684, was younger son of Sir James Rushout (d. 1698), first baronet of Milnst-Maylards, Essex, by Alice, daughter and heiress of Edward Pitt, of Harrow-on-the-Hill, and relict of Edward Palmer. His grandfather, John Rushout, a native of France, who settled in England as a London merchant in the reign of Charles I, was lineally descended from Joachim de Rouault, Sieur de Boismenart et de Gamaches (known as the Mareschal Gamaches), master of the horse to Louis XI (Dezobry et Bachelet, Dict. i. 1196).
John succeeded his nephew, Sir James Rushout, as fourth baronet, 21 Sept. 1711. He did not, however, inherit the manor of Maylards, which passed out of the family (Morant, Essex, i. 69). Entering parliament for the borough of Malmesbury at a by-election in April 1713, he was re-elected at the general election of the following August, and again in 1715. He was chosen both for Malmesbury and Evesham in 1722, but having been unseated on petition for the former constituency, he continued to represent Evesham until he retired from parliament at the dissolution of 1768, having thus enjoyed a seat for fifty-four years, and attained the position of father of the House of Commons.
Rushout acted as Lord Hervey's second in the latter's duel with William Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath) in St. James's Park, 25 Jan. 1731 (Gent. Mag.) He was a frequent speaker in the house against the measures of Sir Robert Walpole. He acted as teller for the opposition against the convention in 1739, and was chosen one of the committee of secrecy appointed to inquire into Walpole's conduct during the last ten years of his administration, 26 March 1742. Sir John accepted office in Lord Carteret's ministry as a lord-commissioner of the treasury with a salary of 1,600l. a year, in February 1742, whence he was promoted to the very lucrative post of treasurer of the navy in December 1743, and was admitted to the privy council, 19 Jan. 1744; but on the formation of the ‘broadbottom’ administration in the following December, he retired from office. He was elected high steward of Malmesbury in June 1743, and died, at the great age of ninety-one, on 2 March 1775, when his memory, good humour, and politeness were in full bloom. Short in stature, he was said to be choleric in temper (Walpole, Letters). He married, 9 Oct. 1729, Anne (d. 1766), sixth daughter of George Compton, fourth earl of Northampton. His only son, John, was raised to the peerage as Lord Northwick, in 1797. The title became extinct on the death of George Rushout, third baron, in 1887.
[Wotton's Baronetage, 1771, ii. 209; Burke's Peerage; Haydn's Book of Dignities; Parliamentary Returns.]
W. R. W.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Russel, Theodore

​RUSSEL, ROUSSEEL, or RUSSELL, THEODORE (1614–1689), portrait-painter, born in London, was baptised at the Dutch church, Austin Friars, on 9 Oct. 1614. He was the son of Nicasius Rousseel (or Russel), a goldsmith, of Bruges, jeweller to James I and Charles I, who settled in London about 1567, and on 21 April 1590 was married at the Dutch church, Austin Friars, to his first wife, Jacomina Wils of Meessene; by her he had a family, including a son John, who is probably identical with a Jan Rossel or Russel resident at Mortlake from 1629 to 1645, and probably connected with the tapestry works there. Nicasius married as his second wife, at the Dutch church, on 27 Nov. 1604, Clara Jansz, daughter of Cornelis and Johanna Jansz, and sister of Cornelis Jansz (Janssen or Jonson) van Ceulen [q. v.], the famous portrait-painter; by her also he had a numerous family, to one of whom (Isaac, born in May 1616) the famous miniature-painter, Isaac Oliver, stood godfather, while to another (Nicasius, born in January 1618–19) Cornelis Janssen and Isaac Oliver's widow stood sponsors.
Theodore Russel was brought up under his father, by whom he was admitted into the Dutch church in 1640, and afterwards by his uncle, Cornelis Janssen, with whom he lived for about nine years; afterwards he lived as assistant and copyist for about a year with Vandyck. He gained some repute as a portrait-painter, and copied many of Vandyck's portraits on a smaller scale. A portrait of Sir John Suckling, copied in this way, is now in the National Portrait Gallery. Several of his copies were in the royal collections, and among the nobility by whom he was patronised were the Earls of Essex and Holland. Russel resided in Blackfriars, married in January 1649, and died in 1689, leaving a family. According to Vertue, he was ‘a lover of Ease and his Bottle.’
Antony Russel (1663?–1743), portrait-painter, son of Theodore Russel, carried on the tradition of portrait-painting, and is said to have studied under John Riley [q. v.] A portrait by him of the famous Dr. Sacheverell, painted in 1710, was engraved in mezzotint by John Smith. He was an intimate friend of George Vertue [q. v.], who engraved some of his portraits, and he supplied Vertue with many biographical notes concerning artists of the seventeenth century, which are now embodied in Walpole's ‘Anecdotes of Painting.’ He died in London in 1743, aged about eighty.
L. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rushworth, John (1669-1736)

​RUSHWORTH, JOHN (1669–1736), surgeon, born in 1669, was son of Thomas Rushworth, vicar of St. Sepulchre, Northampton, during 1666, and afterwards vicar of Guilsborough in Northamptonshire. John qualified as a surgeon, and lived in Northampton, where he attained to considerable practice. He is eminent for the discovery of the efficacy of cinchona bark in cases of gangrene, a discovery which was utilised by John Ranby (1703–1773) [q. v.] some years later. This discovery Rushworth first made known to Sir Hans Sloane in 1721, but he subsequently communicated it to the master and wardens of the Company of Barber-Surgeons for the use of the profession at large.
Rushworth shares with Garth the honour of being one of the first to suggest the foundation of infirmaries and dispensaries in the centre of every county and town, and he was especially earnest in endeavouring to carry this project into effect in Northamptonshire. But the infirmary for that county was not established till 1743, some six years after his death. Rushworth was especially desirous of advancing the surgical art, which he called the ‘ancientest and certainest part of physic.’ He died on 6 Dec. 1736, and is buried in the church of All Saints, Northampton, where there is a tablet to his memory, and to that of his wife Jane, heiress of Daniel Danvers of Northampton, doctor of medicine, and sister of Knightly Danvers, recorder of Northampton. She predeceased Rushworth on 3 July 1725.
The names of the ten children of the family are recorded on the tablet to the memory of the mother.
Rushworth published: 1. ‘The Case of the late James Keill [q. v.], Dr. of Physic, represented by J. R.,’ Oxford, 8vo, 1719; reprinted in Beckett's ‘Tracts,’ p. 62. 2. ‘A Letter to the Mrs. or Governors of the Mystery and Commonalty of Barber-Surgeons,’ Northampton? 1731, 8vo. 3. ‘A Proposal for the Improvement of Surgery; offered to the Masters of the Mystery of Barbers and Surgeons at London,’ London, 1732, 8vo. 4. ‘Two Letters showing the great advantage of the Bark in Mortifications,’ London, 1732, 12mo.
D’A. P.