OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bockman, R.

The ODNB give his forename as Gerhard.
​BOCKMAN, R. (fl. 1750), portrait painter and mezzotint engraver, the initial of whose Christian name is given by Füssli as C. or G., was known as an artist in Amsterdam, whence he appears to have come first to England. He worked in this country in the early part of the eighteenth century. He painted several portraits of the Duke of Cumberland, and a life-size half-length of Admiral Russell, which is in the hospital at Greenwich. He copied after Kneller, and engraved portraits in mezzotint after Vandyck, Vanloo, Dahl, Worsdale, and others. He painted and engraved (1743) a picture of 'St. Dunstan holding the Devil by the nose with the tongs.' His ​widow applied for relief to the Society of Artists in 1769. Heinecken mentions amongst his portraits those of 'Thomas Chubb the Deist,' of 'Thomas Holles, duke of Newcastle,' of 'Charles, Lord Talbot,' and of 'William Walker.'
[Heinecken's Dictionnaire des Artistes, 1789; Füssli's Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, 1806; Redgrave's Dict, of Artists, 1878.]
E. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bocland, Geoffrey de

​BOCLAND, GEOFFREY de (fl. 1195–1224), justice, was both a lawyer and a churchman. He was a justiciar in the years 1195–7, 1201-4, and 1218, in all which years fines were levied before him on the feast of St. Margaret at Westminster. As early as the beginning of John's reign he was connected with the exchequer, and as late as 1220 he was a justice itinerant in the county of Hereford. His ecclesiastical career begins in 1200, when he was archdeacon of Norfolk (not, Norwich, as Blomefield, Norwich, i. 642). Between 1200 and 1216 the churches of Tenham and Pageham were granted him, and in the latter year, 25 March, he is found dean of St. Martin's-le-Grand, preferment which he obtained from the crown. He was concerned in the revolt of the barons in 1216, and twice in the year time and a safe-conduct were given him to appear before the king. In this year also his manor of Tacheworth in Herefordshire was forfeited and granted to Nicholas de Jelland. On Henry III's accession he was restored to his judicial position, and in 1224 he was still alive. In that year a claim was made against him by the archdeacon of Colchester for Newport, an important portion of his deanery, and he obtained a prohibition by writ against the archdeacon. Shortly before there had also been a dispute as to a vicarage in Colchester archdeaconry, that of Wytham, between Bocland and the canons of St. Martin's. The dean at last resigned whatever right he had to Eustace de Fauconbergh, bishop of London, who granted it to the canons of St. Martin's, ordaining a perpetual vicarage there; and the grant was confirmed in 1222 under the seals of the bishop, dean, and chapter of St. Paul's, and dean and canons of St. Martin's (Newcourt, Repert. ii. 675). But by February 1231 he was dead, and had been succeeded by Walter de Maitland as dean of St. Martin's. Maitland was appointed 14 Sept. 1225 (Newcourt). An elder brother of his, William de Bocland, married a daughter of one Geoffrey de Say, and sister-in-law of Geoffrey FitzPeter, and on the latter's death in 1214 Geoffrey de Bocland was ordered to sell to the king, at the market price, the corn and stock on Fitz Peter's estate at Berkhampstead. About the middle of the fourteenth century Maud, widow of William de Bocland, confirmed to the monastery of Walden the grant of the advowson of Essenham vicarage in the archdeaconry of Colchester (Newcourt, ii. 245).
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Dugdale's Origines Juridiciales, 42; Le Neve, 219; Maitland's London, 767; Rot. de Liberat. 2 John, 8, De oblatis, 2 John, 89; Chart 2 John, 99.]
J. A. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bocking, Ralph

​BOCKING, RALPH (d. 1270), Dominican, is stated to have been a native of Chichester. He was the private confessor of Richard Wych, who held the see of Chichester from 1245 till his death in 1253. Ralph lived for many years on very intimate terms with the bishop, and on the latter's canonisation, early in 1262, was requested by Isabel, countess of Arundel, and Robert de Kilwardby (chief of the Dominican order in England, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury) to write St. Richard's life. Ralph readily performed the task, and dedicated it to the Lady Isabel. His style is declamatory; but he utilises much information derived from the bishop, and he describes much that he himself witnessed. A thirteenth-century manuscript of the life is in the British Museum (MS. Sloane, 1772, ff. 25-70). It was printed in the Bollandists' 'Acta Sanctorum,' 1675. under 3 April. A popular abridgment of Ralph's life by John Elmer, manuscripts of which are extant in the British Museum (MS. Cotton, Tib. e, 1), in the Bodleian (MS. Tanner, 15), and at York, is printed in Capgrave's 'Nova Legenda Angliæ.' fol. 269 b. Bale attributes to Ralph a series of sermons, but of them nothing is now known.
[Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue, iii. 136-8, 179; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Bollandists' Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis, i. 282-318.]
S. L. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Currey, Frederick

​CURREY, FREDERICK (1819–1881), mycologist, was born at Norwood in Surrey 19 Aug. 1819, his father, Benjamin Currey, being clerk of the parliaments. After Eton, and Trinity College, Cambridge, he took his B.A. in 1841, and proceeded M.A. in 1844; in the latter year being called to the bar. In 1860 he was elected secretary of the Linnean Society, which office he held for twenty years, when he became treasurer. He died at Blackheath 8 Sept. 1881, and was buried at Weybridge, where his wife had been previously interred. His publications consist of a translation of Hofmeister's ‘On the Higher Cryptogamia,’ a new edition of Dr. Badham's ‘Esculent Funguses,’ sundry papers on fungi and local botany.
The genus of fungi Curreya was founded by Saccardo as a memento of the deceased mycologist. His collection of fungi is now part of the Kew Herbarium.
[Proc. Linn. Soc. 1880–2, pp. 59, 60; Journ. Bot. new ser. x. (1881), 310–12; Roy. Soc. Cat. Sci. Papers, ii. 108–9.]
B. D. J.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Currie, Frederick

​CURRIE, Sir FREDERICK, bart. (1799–1875), Indian official, third son of Mark Currie of Cobham, Surrey, by Elizabeth, daughter of John Close of Easby, Yorkshire, was born on 3 Feb. 1799. He was educated at Charterhouse and the East India Company's College at Haileybury, and was appointed a cadet in the Bengal civil service in 1817. He reached India in 1820, and, after serving in various capacities in the revenue and judicial departments, was appointed a judge of the court of sudder adawlut of the north-western provinces in 1840. From this post he was removed in 1842, and made secretary in the foreign department to the government of India. It was in this capacity that he rendered his greatest services to the East India Company, especially during the first Sikh war. He accompanied the governor-general, Sir Henry Hardinge, to the front, and when the war was concluded by the victory of Sobraon, he was selected to draw up the treaty of peace with the Sikhs. He made the arrangements for the settlement of the Punjab, of which Sir Henry Lawrence was appointed president. For these services he was warmly mentioned in despatches by the governor-general, who spoke in the highest terms of his ‘tact and ability,’ and was created a baronet on 11 Jan. 1847. He remained in his office until 1849, twice serving as temporary member of council in 1847 and 1848, and on 12 March 1849 he was appointed member of the supreme council, and held that office until 1853, when he returned to England. In April 1854 he was elected a director of the East India Company, and he was the last chairman of that company, being elected to the chair in 1857. His advice was greatly followed by the government in the transference of power from the company to the crown in 1858, and had especial weight, both from the position he held and from his valuable services in India, and when the transference was completed he was one of the eight members of the first council of the secretary of state for India nominated by the crown. He was at once appointed vice-president of the council of India, a post which he held until the year 1860, and as a most active member of that council he had much to do with settling the system upon which India is still governed. Currie was made an honorary D.C.L. by the university of Oxford in 1866; he was married three times, and left at his death, which took place at St. Leonards on 11 Sept. 1875, a family of eight sons and four daughters.
[Times, 16 Sept. 1875; Despatches of Lord Hardinge and Lord Gough relating to the late war, 1847.]
H. M. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Curry, John

​CURRY, JOHN, M.D. (d. 1780), historian, was descended from an ancient Irish family (O'Corra) who lost their estates in the county of Cavan during the wars of 1641–52 and 1689–91. His grandfather commanded a troop of horse in the service of James II, and fell at the head of it in the battle of Aughrim. His father took to commerce. He was born in Dublin, studied medicine for many years at Paris, and afterwards obtained a diploma for the practice of physic at Rheims. Having returned to his native city, he rose there to eminence as a physician. In the hope of dispelling the prejudices against the Roman catholics, caused by the sermons annually preached on the memorial day of the Irish rebellion of 1641, he published what is described as a ‘Dialogue.’ It is probably the book entitled ‘Brief Account from the most authentic Protestant Writers, &c., of the Irish Rebellion, 1641,’ London, 1747, 8vo (Shirley, Cat. of the Library at Lough Fea, p. 132). Curry's work was attacked in a voluminous pamphlet by Walter Harris, entitled ‘Faction Unmasked, or an Answer to a Dialogue, lately published by a Popish Physician, and pretended to have passed between a Dissenter and a member of the Church of Ireland; wherein the causes, motives, and mischiefs of the Irish Rebellion and Massacres in 1641 are laid thick upon the Protestants,’ Dublin, 1752, 8vo. Curry rejoined in his ‘Historical Memoirs,’ from which Henry Brooke [q. v.] gathered the materials for his ‘Tryal of the Cause of the Roman Catholicks’ (1761). Subsequently Curry enlarged his plan in a work entitled ‘An Historical and Critical Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland,’ Dublin, 1775, 4to, in which he gives a general view of the times from Henry II, and begins his details with the reign of Queen Elizabeth, ending with the settlement under King William. After the author's death, which occurred in 1780, a new edition, prepared by Charles O'Conor of Belanagare, Roscommon, appeared in 2 vols., Dublin, 1786 (reprinted in one volume, Dublin, 1810, 8vo). ​This was greatly enlarged from the author's manuscripts, with new matter taken from parliamentary journals, state acts, and other authentic documents. To it the editor added an account by Curry of ‘The State of the Catholics of Ireland from the settlement under King William to the relaxation of the Popery Laws in 1778.’ Besides the above-mentioned works Curry wrote ‘An Essay on ordinary Fevers,’ London, 1743, 8vo; and ‘Some Thoughts on the Nature of Fevers, on the causes of their becoming mortal, and on the means to prevent it,’ London, 1774, 8vo. He was one of the founders of the first catholic committee, which met privately in March 1760 at the Elephant Tavern in Essex Street, Dublin, and which was the forerunner of the powerful associations that achieved emancipation seventy years afterwards under O'Connell.
[Memoir by O'Conor; Shirley's Library at Lough Fea, pp. 82, 251; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biog. p. 120; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Wyse's Hist. Sketch of the Catholic Association, i. 33 seq.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Borthwick, William (d.1542)

​BORTHWICK, WILLIAM (d. 1542), fourth Lord Borthwick, was the eldest son of the third Lord Borthwick and Maryota de Hope Pringle. He succeeded to the title on the death of his father at the battle of Flodden on 9 Sept. 1513. Immediately afterwards the council of the kingdom ordered the castle of Stirling to be victualled and fortified to receive the young king, James V. Lord Borthwick was to be captain and the king’s guardian (Cal, State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. i. (1509-14) 4556). He set his seal to a treaty with England on 7 Oct. 1517 (Fœdera, xiii. 600). After the coronation of James V in 1524 he swore to be true to the king and disavow the Duke of Albany. He died in 1542. By his marriage to Margaret, eldest daughter of John Lord Hay of Yester, he had two sons and two daughters.
[Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, ii. 654; Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII.]
T. F. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Borrell, H. P.

​BORRELL, H. P. (d. 1851), numismatist, after learning business in London, established himself as a trader at Smyrna, where he resided for thirty-three years. He devoted much of his attention to the discovery of inedited Greek coins, in which he was remarkably successful. The results of his discoveries ivere given in papers contributed to the ‘Revue Numismatique,’ the ‘Numismatic Chronicle,’ and various German periodicals devoted to numismatic science. In 1836 he published at Paris ‘Notice sur quelques médailles grecques des rois de Chypre.’ His collection of coins, antiquities, and gems was sold at London in 1851. He died at Smyrna 2 Oct. of the same year.
[Gent. Mag. (new ser.) xxxix. 324; Proceedings of the Numismatic Society for 24 June 1852, in vol. xv. of the Numismatic Chronicle.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Borrer, William

​BORRER, WILLIAM (1781–1862), botanist, was born at Henfield, Sussex, on 13 June 1781, and died there on 10 Jan. 1862. He received his earlier education in private schools at Hurstpierpoint and Carshalton in Surrey. Although he left school at an early age, he continued his studies under tutors, and obtained a good knowledge of the classics and French. His father wished him to adopt agriculture as a pursuit, though his own proclivities were towards medicine; but, being possessed of an ample fortune, he devoted himself to the study of botany, especially of his own country. He made repeated journeys in all parts of Britain, and endeavoured to cultivate every critical British species and all the hardy exotic plants he could obtain, having at one time as many as 6,660 species. His knowledge of the difficult genera Salix, Rubus, and Rosa was great, and his help was eagerly sought and willingly rendered both by purse and time.
He published but little—a few pages in the ‘Phytologist,' some descriptions in the supplement to ‘English Botany,’ and his share with Dawson Turner in the privately printed ‘Lichenographia. Britannica,’ of which only a few sheets were printed and issued long after, in 1839. He wrote the descriptions of the species of Myosotis. Rosa, and nearly all of Rubus for Sir W. Hooker's ‘British Flora’ in 1830 and subsequent editions. He was a fellow of the Royal, Linnean, and Wernerian societies, and justice of the peace for Sussex. Several plants were named after him, and the genus Borreria of Acharius amongst lichens, but the genus Borreria of G. W. Meyer is now merged in Spermacoce. The following species were named after him: Rubus Borreri, Poa Borreri, Parmelia Borreri, Hypnum Borrerianum, Callithamnion Borreri. His rich and critical herbarium of British plants is kept at the Royal Gardens, Kew.
[Proc Linn. Soc. (1862), pp. lxxxv-xc; Seemann's Jour. Bot. (1863), i. 31; Cat. Scientific Papers, i. 499.]
B. D. J.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Borthwick, William (1760-1820)

​BORTHWICK, WILLIAM (1760–1820), general, was the eldest son of Lieutenant-general William Borthwick, R.A., and entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich as a gentleman cadet in 1772. He became a second lieutenant R.A. in 1777, lieutenant in 1779, and captain-lieutenant in 1790, with which rank he served in Flanders. As brigadier-general he prepared the siege train with which Wellington bombarded Ciudad Rodrigo in January 1812, and was severely wounded during the siege. He also prepared the siege train for the last siege of Badajoz; but in April 1812 he was promoted major-general, and had to hand over his command to Colonel Framingham, because the number of artillerymen in the Peninsula was supposed not to justify the presence there of a general officer, After his return he received a gold medal for the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, but was not even made a C.B. He died at Margate on 20 July 1820.
[Jones's Siege Operations in the Peninsular war; Duncan’s History of the Royal Artillery.]
H. M. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Borstale, Thomas

The ODNB casts doubt on the existence of this person.
​BORSTALE, THOMAS (d. 1290?), scholastic theologian, was a native of Norfolk, and belonged to the convent of Augustinian friars (Friars Eremites) at Norwich. He lived for some time abroad, principally at Paris, where he acquired a great reputation as a theologian and disputant, and obtained the degree of doctor of divinity from the Sorbonne. The writings attributed to him are: 1. 'Super Magistrum Sententiarum' (four books). 2. 'Quodlibeta Scholastica' (one book). 3. 'Ordinariæ Disceptationes' (one book). He died at Norwich in or about the year 1290.
[Bale's Script. 111. Maj. Brit. (Basle edition, 1557), p. 345; Pits, De Angliæ Scriptoribus, 374; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. 113.]
H. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Borthwick, David

​BORTHWICK, DAVID (d. 1581), of Lochill, lord advocate of Scotland in the reign of James VI, was educated at St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews, where his name occurs among the determinants in 1625. He was called to the bar in 1549. He is mentioned by Knox as at first in favour of the Congregation, but afterwards as one of the many whom the queen dowager 'abusit, and by quham sche corrupted the hartis of the sempill.' In 1552 he served on the commission appointed to treat with the English commission on border affairs (Register of Privy Council of Scotland, i. 150). For some time he acted as legal adviser to Bothwell, whose counsel he was both in reference to Queen Mary's abduction to Dunbar, and to the murder of Darnley. Along with Crichton ​of Elliock, he was in 1573 appointed king's advocate, and, as was then customary, also took his seat as a lord of session. In 1574 he served on the commission for framing a constitution for the church of Scotland. He died in January 1581-2. According to Scot of Scotstarvet, he acquired 'many lands in Lothian and Fife, as Balnacrieff, Admiston, Balcarras, and others, but having infeft his son Sir James therein in his lifetime, he rested never till he had sold all.' Hearing on his death-bed that his son had just sold another estate, he, according to the same authority, exclaimed, 'What shall I say ? I give him to the devil that gets a fool, and makes not a fool of him,' words which afterwards became proverbial as 'David Borthwick's Testament.
[Sir John Scot's Staggering State of Scottish Statesmen, ed. 1872, p. 108; Works of Knox, ed. Laing, i. 106, 414, ii. 44, vi. 667; Register of Privy Council of Scotland ; Haig and Brunton's Senators of the College of Justice, pp. 154-5; Omond's Lord Advocates of Scotland, i. 37.]
T. F. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Grant, James William

​GRANT, JAMES WILLIAM (1788–1865), astronomer, was born at Wester Elchies in Morayshire on 12 Aug. 1788. His father, Robert Grant, made a fortune abroad, and bought about 1783 the Elchies estate, hereditary in a branch of his family, to which he subsequently added the lands of Knockando and Ballintomb. James William Grant entered the East India Company's service as a writer on 22 July 1805, and filled appointments of increasing importance in Bengal until his retirement in 1849. He employed his leisure in scientific pursuits, and with an excellent five-foot achromatic he detected, on 23 July 1844, the companion of Antares, two years before the duplicity of the star was perceived by Mitchel. Excessive modesty, however, caused him to neglect publishing the discovery, which became known only through Professor Piazzi Smyth's examination of his observing papers. On his elder brother's death, in 1828, he inherited the family estates. He returned to Scotland in 1849, and erected at Elchies a fine observatory in granite, the entrance guarded by sphinxes. Here was placed the 'Trophy Telescope,' conspicuous in 1851 in the nave of the Great Exhibition, and the first large telescope erected in Scotland. The object-glass, eleven inches in diameter, was by Ross, the mount by Ransome & May. Grant's use of it was hampered by the climate and growing ill-health; but Professor Piazzi Smyth found its performance excellent in a set of observations on double stars made at Elchies in the autumn of 1862 (Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Soc. xxiii. 2). It was sold in 1864 to Mr. Aytoun of Glenfarg, Perthshire.
Grant was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society on 13 Jan. 1854. His sole publication was a letter 'On the Influence of Climate upon the Telescopic Appearance of a Celestial Body' (ib. xiv. 165), accompanying two sketches of Mars, made respectively at Calcutta and Elchies. He was an accomplished microscopist, his slides evoking the admiration of native and foreign experts. Botany, natural history, and painting were also cultivated by him. He married Margaret, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Wilson of Gamrie in Banffshire, and had by her eight sons and four daughters, all born in India. The present laird of Elchies is his grandson. He died at Wester Elchies of gout on 17 Sept. 1865, and was buried in Knockando churchyard. His wife died in London on 28 Jan. 1855. Grant's mind was one of singular sweetness and elevation, and he was regretted alike as a friend, a landlord, and a benefactor to the poor.
A. M. C.