OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clay, John (1796-1858)

​CLAY, JOHN (1796–1858), prison chaplain, was the fifth son of Thomas Clay of Liverpool, ship and anchor smith, who died in 1821, by Mary, daughter of Ralph Lowe of Williamson Square, Liverpool, tanner. He was born in Liverpool on 10 May 1796, and after receiving a commercial education entered a merchant's office, but the failure of his master left him at the age of twenty-one without employment. He had, however, mechanical genius, and invented a chair for persons suffering with spinal complaints, and an improved bow and arrow which long bore his name. After spending a considerable time in self-education he was ordained as a literate by the Bishop of Chester on 11 Aug. 1821, and obtained a title for orders by acting as assistant-chaplain at Preston house of correction. On 22 Sept. 1822 he was ordained a priest, and soon after entered as a ten-years man at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but did not keep the three terms required until 1834-5, when he took his degree as bachelor of divinity. He became chaplain of the gaol in 1823, and held the post for thirty-six years. His one ambition in life was the reformation and reclamation of prisoners, and to this end he incessantly laboured. His experience soon taught him that the indiscriminate mixture of prisoners was the great hindrance to any improvement in their moral condition, and his chief efforts were made in the direction of the silent and separate confinement of criminals. He befriended all who deserved ​help, and communicated with their friends. He stated that in eighteen years he was only once insulted by a prisoner. From 1824 he commenced issuing annual reports, and after a time entered so minutely into the details of prison management that his report became a thick octavo volume and made him an authority on criminal reform. In 1836 his annual reports were reprinted in a parliamentary blue book, and in a debate on education three years afterwards Lord John Russell quoted Clay's description of the ignorance of many of the prisoners. The chaplain in 1847 gave valuable evidence before Lord Brougham's committee of investigation into the question of the execution of the criminal laws. Lord Harrowby, then chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, offered him, when he was in pecuniary difficulties, the rectory of Castleford, Yorkshire, but with conscientious ideas about keeping curates there, he declined the gift. Ill-health obliged him to resign his chaplaincy in January 1858. He died at Leamington on 21 Nov. 1858. He married, 11 March 1828, Henrietta, third daughter of Mr. Fielding; she died at Preston on 28 June 1858.
Besides the prison reports already mentioned he was the author of:
* 'Twenty-five Sermons,' 1827.
* 'Burial Clubs and Infanticide in England. A Letter to W. Brown, esq., M.P.,' 1854.
* 'A Plain Address to Candidates for Confirmation,' 1866.
[W. L. Clay's Prison Chaplain, 1861, with portrait.]
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clay, William (1791-1869)

​CLAY, Sir WILLIAM (1791–1869), politician, born in London in 1791, was the son of George Clay, an eminent merchant, into whose firm Clay was admitted at an early age. In 1832 he was elected M.P. in the liberal interest for the newly created Tower Hamlets constituency. He occupied the seat till 1857. He was appointed secretary to the board of control in 1839 under Lord Melbourne's ministry. This office he held till the retirement of his party in 1841, when he was created a baronet. Clay was a magistrate for Middlesex and Westminster, and was also chairman of the Grand Junction and Southwark and Vauxhall water companies. He died at Cadogan Place, Chelsea, London, on 13 March 1869. In 1822 Clay married Harriet, daughter of Thomas Dickason of Fulwell Lodge, Middlesex, and had issue three sons and six daughters.
Clay published the following pamphlets:
* 'Speech at the Meeting of the Electors of the Tower Hamlete,' 1834.
* 'Speech on Moving for a Committee to inquire into the Act permitting the Establishment of Joint-Stock Banks,' 2nd edit. 1837, replied to by 'Vindex,' 1836.
* 'Remarks on the Expediency of restricting the Issue of Promissory Notes to a Single Issuing Body,' 1844.
* 'Remarks on the Water Supplv of London,' 2nd edit. 1849, replied to by T. Coates, in 'Statement of the Plan of supplying London with Water, proposed in the "Metropolitan Waterworks Bill," ' &c. 1850.
* 'Speech on moving the Second Heading of the Church Rate Abolition Bill,' 1856.
[Times, 17 March 1869, p. 12; Men of the Time, 1868, p. 183; Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for 1869, p. 232.]
F. W-t.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clay, William Keatinge

​CLAY, WILLIAM KEATINGE (1797–1867), antiquary, was born in 1797, and, having been ordained deacon in 1823 by the Bishop of Salisbury, became curate of Greenwich. He was ordained priest in the following year by the Bishop of London. He was curate of Paddington in 1830, and of Blunham, Bedfordshire, in 1834. In 1835 he took the degree of B.D. at Jesus College, Cambridge, as a 'ten-year' man, under the statute of Elizabeth (now repealed); he became minor canon of Ely Cathedral in 1837, and was subsequently appointed 'prælector theologicus' and librarian of the cathedral. In 1842 he was instituted to the perpetual curacy of Holy Trinity, Ely, and was collated in 1854 by Dr. Turton, bishop of Ely, to the vicarage of Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, where he died on 26 April 1867.
His works are:
* 'Explanatory Notes on the Prayer Book Version of the Psalms,' London, 1839, 8vo.
* 'The Book of Common Prayer illustrated; so as to show its various modifications, the date of its several parts, and the authority on which they rest,' London, 1841, 8vo.
* 'An Historical sketch of the Prayer Book,' London, 1849, 8vo.
* Histories of the parishes of Waterbeach (1859), Landbeach (1861), and Horningsey (1865) in Cambridgeshire. These three parochial histories, printed separately by the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, were collected into one volume with a common title-page, Cambridge, 1865, 8vo.
* 'A History of the Parish of Milton in the county of Cambridge,' edited by the Rev. W. G. Searle for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1869.
He edited for the Parker Society 'Liturgies and Occasional Forms of Prayer set forth in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth,' 1847, and 'Private Prayers put forth by authority during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. With an appendix containing the Litany of 1544,' Cambridge, 1851. He also assisted in the edition of the 'Book of Common Prayer' ​issued by the Ecclesiastical History Society in 1849-54, and in the edition of Wheatley's 'Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer,' reprinted in 1858 by the syndics of the Cambridge University Press.
[Memoir prefixed to History of Milton; Cambridge Chronicle, 4 May 1867; Graduati Cantab. (1856), p. 79; Gent. Mag. ccxxi. 825.]
T. C.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.69 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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| 11 | i | 2 | Clay, William K.: for Wheatley read Wheatly |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clay, Alfred Borron

​CLAY, ALFRED BORRON (1831–1868), painter, born 3 June 1831 at Walton, near Preston, Lancashire, was the second son of the Rev. John Clay [q. v.], the well-known ​chaplain of Preston gaol, and Henrietta Fielding, his wife. He was educated at the Preston grammar school, but also received instruction from his father, who added to his other merits that of being an accomplished artist. Clay was intended for the legal profession, and was articled to a solicitor at Preston, but having great love of art decided on quitting his profession and becoming a painter. A portrait of his mother removing the doubts of his parents as to the advisability of this step, he went to Liverpool to study in 1852, and later in the same year became a student of the Royal Academy in London. In 1854 he exhibited for the first time, sending to the British Institution 'Finishing Bleak House,' and to the Royal Academy 'Nora Creina' and 'Margaret Ramsay;' in 1855 he sent to the Royal Academy a portrait of his father, and continued to contribute to the same exhibition regularly up to the time of his death. The chief pictures painted by him were 'The Imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots at Lochleven Castle,' exhibited in 1861; 'Charles IX and the French Court at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew,' exhibited in 1865; and 'The Return to Whitehall, 29 May 1660,' exhibited in 1807, and now in the Walker Gallery at Liverpool. This was his last work of importance, as his health failed about this time, and he died at Rainhill, near Liverpool, on 1 Oct. 1868, aged 37, just at the commencement of a very promising career. On 9 April 1856 he married Elizabeth Jane Fayrer, who survived him, and by whom he left a family.
L. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clavering, Robert

1904 Errata appended.
​CLAVERING, ROBERT (1671–1747), bishop of Peterborough, son of William Clavering of Tillmouth, Durham, was born in 1671. He was admitted of Lincoln College, Oxford, on 26 June 1693, at the age of twenty-one, having graduated previously at Edinburgh, and after a residence of three years was permitted to proceed M.A. as a member of that house on 20 May 1696 (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vi. 589). In 1701 he was fellow and tutor of University College. In July 1714 he was preferred to the deanery and rectory of Booking, Essex, which he resigned on 27 July 1719 for the well-endowed rectory of Marsh Gibbon, Buckinghamshire. Meanwhile he had accumulated his degrees in divinity, proceeding D.D. on 2 March 1715 as a member of Christ Church, and having been elected regius professor of Hebrew on 20 May of that year in place of Roger Altham, resigned, was made prebendary of the sixth stall in the cathedral on the following 2 June. On 2 Jan. 1725 he was promoted to the bishopric of Llandaff and deanery of Hereford, two posts which at that time always went together, where he continued until his translation to Peterborough in February 1729. He obtained permission to hold his professorship, prebendal stall, and rectory with his bisnopric. Clavering died on 21 July 1747. By his wife Mary, second daughter of John Cook, a Spanish merchant, of Fawley Court, Buckinghamshire, he had a son and four daughters. Besides two episcopal charges and three sermons, he published: 'R. Mosis Maimonidis Tractatus duo: 1. De doctrina Legis, sive educatione puerorum. 2. De natura & ratione Pœnitentia apud Hebræos [being the third and fifth chapters of the first book of the Yad hachazakah]. Latine reddidit notisque illustravit R. Clavering. . . . Præmittitur dissertatio de Maimonide en usque operibus,' Oxford, 1705, 4to. The 'Dissertatio' was reprinted by Blasius Ugolinus in vol. viii. of his 'Thesaurus Antiquitatum.' Clavering's portrait, by Thomas Gibson, was engraved by Jean Simon.
[Noble's Continuation of Granger, iii. 91; Raine's North Durham, p. 325; Morant's Essex, ii. 389; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, iii. 54-5; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy); Marshall's Genealogist, iii. 76.]
G. G.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.69 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| | | 8 f.e. | Clavering, Robert: for was made prebendary of read to which was adjoined |
| | | 6 f.e. | before On 2 Jan. insert From 1713 to 1725 he was treasurer of St. Davids. |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cottle, Amos Simon

​COTTLE, AMOS SIMON (1768?–1800), elder brother of Joseph Cottle [q. v.], was born in Gloucestershire about 1768. He received a classical education at Mr. Henderson's school at Hanham, near Bristol, and subsequently at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but did not take his B.A. degree until 1799. He died at his chambers in Clifford's Inn on 28 Sept. 1800. His principal work is ‘Icelandic Poetry, or the Edda of Saemund, translated into English verse,’ Bristol, 1797. It is not stated whether the translation is made from the original Icelandic or from a Latin version, most probably the latter. It is neither faithful nor vigorous, but displays considerable facility of versification. It is preceded by a critical introduction of no value, and a poetical address from Southey to the author, which contains the celebrated panegyric of Mary Wollstonecraft, ‘who among women left no equal mind.’ As she died on 10 Sept. 1797, and Cottle's preface is dated on 1 Nov., it must have been composed immediately after her death. Several minor poems of Cottle, including a panegyric on missionary enterprise and a Latin ode on the French conquest of Italy, are published along with his brother's ‘Malvern Hills.’
R. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cotter, George Sackville

​COTTER, GEORGE SACKVILLE (1755–1831), poet and translator, was the fourth son of Sir James Cotter. He was educated at Westminster School, of which he was captain in 1770, and in 1771 he was elected to St. Peter's College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1775 and M.A. in 1779. Having taken holy orders he became vicar of Kilmacdonough, and rector of Kilcreddan-Garrivoe and Ightermorragh, diocese of Cloyne. In 1788 he published two volumes of ‘Poems,’ dedicated to Lady Shannon, and consisting of a poem in two books, entitled ‘Prospects,’ and a collection of odes and other fugitive pieces. In 1826 he published a translation of Terence for the use of schools, in the preface to which he states that when at Westminster School he had been an actor in three of Terence's comedies. In the following year he printed seven of the plays of Plautus, ‘translated literally and grammatically, and cleared of objectionable passages.’ The later years of his life were spent at Youghal, Cork, and he died in 1831. By his wife, a daughter of Bayley Rogers, physician and banker of Cork, he left, with other issue, four sons.
[Welch's Alumni Westmonasterienses, ed. 1852, pp. 383, 393, 394, 534, 536, 573; Foster's Baronetage and Knightage.]
T. F. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cotterell, William

​COTTERELL, WILLIAM (d. 1744), bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, was grandson of Sir Charles Cotterell [q. v.], and the third son of Sir Charles Lodowick Cotterell, by his second wife, Elizabeth, only daughter of Chaloner Chute of the Vyne, near Basingstoke, Hampshire. Sir Clement Cotterell was his brother. One of the same name (probably the future bishop), having passed through Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduated B.A. in 1721, and M.A. three years later (see Notes and Queries, 6th ser. iv. 385). In 1725, on the death of Dean John Trench, he was presented to the deanery of Raphoe in the north of Ireland, and the degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by diploma from the university of Oxford 1 March 1733. His promotion to the bishopric of Ferns and Leighlin was by patent dated 24 March 1742–3; but he enjoyed this dignity for little more than twelve months, his death taking place in England on 21 June of the following year. The mention made of him in a letter from Swift to Mrs. Cæsar, dated Dublin, 30 July 1733, would lead us to infer that he was on terms of intimacy with the dean. He died unmarried on 21 June 1744, and was buried at St. Anne's Church, Soho, London, where there is a brief inscription to his memory.
[Burke's Dictionary of the Landed Gentry (1849), i. 342; Catalogue of Oxford Graduates; Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ; Scott's ed. of Swift's Works (1824), xviii. 152.]
B. H. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cottisford, John

​COTTISFORD, JOHN (d. 1540?), rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, was educated at Lincoln College, taking the degrees of B.A. in 1505, M.A. in 1510, and D.D. in 1525 (3 July). He served as proctor for 1515, and, on the resignation of Thomas Drax, was elected rector of his college (2 March 1518). This office he held for nearly twenty years. He was also 'commissary' or vice-chancellor of the university. He received this appointment from Archbishop Warham, the chancellor, on the death of Dr. Thomas Musgrave in the autumn of 1527, and took the oaths on 7 Dec. On Warham's death in August 1532 he resigned, and was succeeded by William Tresham, the nominee of John Longland, bishop of Lincoln, the newly elected chancellor. As commissary, Cottisford was engaged in the attempt to stop the introduction of heretical books into Oxford, and in the arrest of Thomas Garret, parson of Honey Lane, London, who was active in the distribution of such literature, and was subsequently burnt in Smithfield in company with Barnes and Jerome. A graphic account of the whole affair, and the dismay of Cottisford on hearing of Garret's escape from his prison by his friend Dalaber, is in Foxe's 'Martyrs' (v. 421). Both Foxe and Strype erroneously give 1526 instead of 1528 as the date of the occurrence.
In 1532 Henry VIII nominated him as one of the canons of the new college (now Christ Church) which he erected on the foundation laid by Cardinal Wolsey, but he continued to hold his rectorship of Lincoln College, in which capacity he signed an acknowledgment of the royal supremacy on 30 July 1534. This document is now in the Public Record Office. His connection with Lincoln College was terminated by his resignation on 7 Jan. 1538, and shortly after (13 Sept.) he was collated to the prebend of All Saints in Hungate, Lincoln, being installed on 5 Oct. His successor was collated in October 1542, so that Gutch's statement that he died in 1540 is, perhaps, not far wrong. The 'Mr. Cotisforde, preacher,' mentioned by Strype (Cranmer, p. 147) in the reign of Edward VI, must be a different person.
C. T. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cotter, Patrick

​COTTER, PATRICK (1761?–1806), Irish giant, was born at Kinsale, co. Cork, in or about 1761, of poor parents of ordinary stature. He was brought up as a bricklayer, but at the age of eighteen was hired by a showman for exhibition in England for the sum of 50l. for three years. Soon after his arrival at Bristol, owing to a disagreement with his master, he was thrown into the debtors' prison for a fictitious debt. Upon his release he established himself at the Bristol fair, and earned 30l. in three days. After the manner of Irish giants he changed his name to O'Brien, ​claiming to be a lineal descendant of Brian, king of Ireland [q. v.], and to have ‘in his person and appearance all the similitude of that great and grand potentate.’ Until the last two years of his life he continued to travel throughout the country exhibiting himself. In 1804, having realised an independence, he retired into private life, and died at his lodgings in the Hotwell Road, Clifton, on 8 Sept. 1806, in the forty-sixth year of his age. He was buried in the jesuit chapel in Trenchard Street, Bristol, where a tablet to his memory states that he was eight feet three inches in height. The inscription on his coffin-plate, however, was ‘Patrick Cotter O'Brien of Kinsale, Ireland, whose stature was 8 feet 1 inch. Died 8 Sept. 1806, aged 46 years.’ It is impossible to reconcile the numerous discrepancies with regard to his height. According to Mr. Blair's account, written in 1804, Cotter ‘could not have been more, on the whole, than 7 feet 10 inches’ (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxiv. pt. i. pp. 420–1); while the catalogue of the contents of the Royal College of Surgeons (pt. v. 1831, p. 51), in the description of a plaster cast of one of his hands, states that his ‘height in the year 1802 was 8 feet 7 inches and a half.’ An engraving by T. Smith of the giant was published in 1785, and another by A. Van Assen, dated 1804, is given in the second volume of Kirby (opp. p. 332). There is also a curious etching by Kay done in 1803, when Cotter was in Edinburgh (vol. ii. No. 210). The giant is here portrayed in the act of being measured for a great coat by a little tailor standing on tiptoe on a chair, while one of Cotter's arms rests carelessly on the top of the roomdoor. Cotter has often been confused with Charles Byrne [q. v.], another Irish giant, who died in London in 1783.
[Wood's Giants and Dwarfs, 1868, pp. 166–187, 375, 385, 457–8; Kirby's Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1804, ii. 332–7; Gent. Mag. 1806, vol. lxxvi. pt. ii. p. 983; Wilson's Wonderful Characters, 1821, i. 415–22; Kay's Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings, 1877, ii. 115–17; Chambers's Book of Days, 1864, ii. 326–7; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. iii. 436, xi. 369, 396.]
G. F. R. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cottesford, Thomas

Thomas Cottisford in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
​COTTESFORD, THOMAS (d. 1555), protestant divine, a native of Winchester, studied first apparently at Oxford, and afterwards at Cambridge, where he took the degree of M.A. He adopted the doctrines of the reformers, and in January 1540–1 was charged before the privy council for setting forth an epistle written by Melanchthon in violation of the act of the six articles, and he was committed to the Fleet during the king's pleasure. He held the rectories of St. Peter and St. Andrew in Walpole, Norfolk, which he resigned on 31 May 1544. On 9 June following he was presented to the vicarage of Littlebury, Essex, and in 1547 was appointed preacher to the royal commissioners for visiting the dioceses of Salisbury, Exeter, Bath, Bristol, and Chichester. On 20 May 1553 he was collated to the rectory of St. Martin, Ludgate, London, and on 10 July in the same year preferred to the prebend of Apesthorpe in the church of York (Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, iii. 167). On the accession of Queen Mary he withdrew to the continent, and resided successively at Copenhagen, Geneva, and Frankfort. He died at Frankfort on 6 Dec. 1555. ​His principal works are: 1. ‘The Reckenynge and Declaracion of the Fayth and Belefe of Huldrike Zwingly, Bysshoppe of Züryk,’ Zurich, 1543, 8vo; [London?], 1548, 8vo; Geneva, 1555, 12mo. To the last edition of this translation from the Latin three pieces by Cottesford himself are appended, viz.: ‘An Epistle wrytten from Copynhauen in Denmarke vnto an Englyshe Marchaunt dwellyng at Wynchestre in Englande,’ ‘An Epistle vvritten to a good Lady, for the comforte of a frende of hers, wherein the Nouations erroure now reuiued by the Anabaptistes is confuted, and the synne agaynste the holy Goste playnly declared,’ and ‘The prayer of Daniel turned into metre and applied vnto our tyme.’ This metrical prayer was licensed to John Alde as a ballad in 1569 or 1570. 2. ‘Pious Prayers for every Day in the Week,’ London, temp. Edward VI, 8vo. 3. ‘Marten Micron, minister of the Dutch Church in London, his short and faithfull instruction for the edifyeng and comfort of the symple christians, which intende to receyue the holy Supper of the Lorde,’ translated from the Dutch, London [1552]. 4. A translation of John à Lasco on the discipline of the church. Cottesford was also, it is said, engaged in the compilation of the liturgy.
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 202; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 415, ii. 394; Gough's Index to Parker Soc. Publications; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. i. 140; Ames's Typogr. Antiq. (Herbert), 711, 1571, 1584; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), i. 231; Bale De Scriptoribus, ix. 63; Ritson's Bibl. Poetica, p. 174.]
T. C.