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# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Grant, James (1743?-1835)

​GRANT, JAMES (1743?–1835), Scotch advocate, born about 1743, was the son of James Grant of Corrimony in Urquhart, Inverness-shire, a Jacobite of 1745, by his wife Jean, daughter of James Ogilvy of Kempcairn. He was admitted advocate in 1767. Being early distinguished for his liberal politics, he numbered among his friends Henry Erskine, Sir James Mackintosh, Francis Jeffrey, Leonard Horner, and other eminent men. He died father of the Scottish bar in 1835 at Lakefield, Glen Urquhart, Inverness-shire, having attained the patriarchal age of ninety-two (Gent. Mag. new ser. iv. 558-9). He was author of:
* ‘Essays on the Origin of Society, Language, Property, Government, Jurisdiction, Contracts, and Marriage. Interspersed with Illustrations from the Greek and Gaelic Languages,’ 4to, London, 1785.
* 'A Letter addressed to the Heritors or Landed Proprietors of Scotland, holding their lands of subject superiors or mediately of the Crown,’ 8vo, Edinburgh, 1790, published anonymously under the pseudonym of ‘Scoto-Britannus.’
* ‘Thoughts on the Origin and Descent of the Gael; with an Account of the Picts, Caledonians, and Scots; and observations relative to the authenticity of the poems of Ossian,’ 8vo, Edinburgh, 1814; another edition, 8vo, London, 1828.
[Private information; Cat. of Printed Books in Library of Faculty of Advocates, iii. 482; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Anderson's Scottish Nation, ii. 366.]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Grant, James (1738-1811)

1904 Errata appended.
​GRANT, Sir JAMES (1738–1811), baronet of Grant, N.B., member of parliament, born 19 May 1738, was only son of Sir Ludovick Grant, baronet of that ilk, by his second wife, Lady Margaret Ogilvie, eldest daughter of James, earl of Findlater and Seafield. He sat in parliament for Elgin and Forres from 1761 to 1768, and on the death of his father, 18 March 1773, succeeded to the baronetcy and the chieftainship of the clan Grant. On the formation of the Highland Society in 1784 he was one of the original office-bearers. He represented Banff from 1790 to 1795, resigning his seat on appointment as cashier of the excise. He was lord-lieutenant of Inverness-shire from 1794 until 1809, when he resigned and was succeeded by his eldest son. On the breakingout of the war with France, Grant offered to raise a regiment of Strathspey or Grant fencible infantry, a service so speedily accomplished that when the regiment assembled at Forres, two months after the declaration of war, seventy men had to be discharged as supernumeraries in excess of the authorised strength. Grant received the army rank of colonel, 1 March 1793. Immediately after he raised a highland ​regiment of the line, enrolled as the 97th or Strathspey foot. It served for a time as marines on board Lord Howe's fleet, in 1794, and was broken up at Portsmouth and drafted into other regiments the year after, the flank companies, which were very fine, being transferred entire to the Black Watch. His great local influence and popularity thus enabled Grant to add thirteen hundred men to the defensive force of the country within a few months, exclusive of the recruits raised for the 97th by other officers.
Grant married, in 1763, Jean, daughter of Alexander Duff of Hatton, Aberdeenshire, and by her, who died in 1805, had three sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Sir Alexander Ludovick Grant, succeeded in 1811 to the earldom and estates of Seafield. Grant died at Castle Grant, where the greater part of his useful life had been spent, on 18 Feb. 1811, after a lingering illness, aged 72.
[Foster's Peerage, under 'Seaforth;' Anderson's Scottish Nation, ii. 362; General David Stewart's Scottish Highlanders (Edinburgh, 1822), ii. 255-6, 351-7, lxxxvii.]
H. M. C.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.139 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 389 | ii | 21 f.e. | Grant, Sir James (1738-1811): after Seafield. insert He was admitted fellow-commoner of Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1756, and graduated M.A. next year. |
| 390 | i | 18 | for Seafield read Seaforth |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dixon, James

​DIXON, JAMES, D.D. (1788–1871), Wesleyan minister, born in 1788 at King's Mills, a hamlet near Castle Donington in Leicestershire, became a Wesleyan minister in 1812. For some years he attracted no particular notice as a preacher, and after taking several circuits he was sent to Gibraltar, where his work was unsuccessful. It was after his return that his remarkable gifts began to be observed. Thenceforth he rose to celebrity among the leading preachers of the Wesleyan body. In 1841 he was elected president of the conference, and on that occasion he preached a sermon on ‘Methodism in its Origin, Economy, and Present Position,’ which was printed as a treatise, and is still regarded as a work of authority. In 1847 he was elected representative of the English conference to the conference of the United States, and also president of the conference of Canada. In this capacity he visited America, preaching and addressing meetings in many of the chief cities. His well-known work, ‘Methodism in America,’ was the fruit of this expedition. Dixon remained in the itinerant Wesleyan ministry without intermission for the almost unexampled space of fifty years, travelling in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other great towns. His preaching was entirely original, and was marked by grandeur, thought, and impassioned feeling. His reputation as a platform speaker was equally high. His speeches at the great Wesleyan missionary anniversaries, and on the slave trade, popery, and other such questions as then stirred the evangelical party in England, were celebrated; and he was selected several times to represent the methodist community at mass meetings that were held upon them. In consequence of the failure of his sight he retired from the full work of the ministry in 1862, and passed the closing years of his life in Bradford, Yorkshire. He died 28 Dec. 1871. With him might perhaps be said to expire the middle period of methodism, the period to which belong the names of Bunting, Watson (whose son-in-law he was), Lessy, and Jackson. Besides the works above mentioned, Dixon was author of a ‘Memoir of the Rev. W. E. Miller,’ and of several published sermons, charges, and lectures. He also wrote occasionally in the ‘London Quarterly Review,’ in the establishing of which he took part. But the great work of his life was preaching, and his sermons were among the most ennobling and beautiful examples of the modern evangelical pulpit.
R. W. D.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Disney, William

​DISNEY, WILLIAM, D.D. (1731–1807), son of the Rev. Joseph Disney, M.A., vicar of Cranbrook and Appledore with the chapel of Ebony in Kent, was born 29 Sept. 1731. He was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School under Mr. Creech, and was entered as a pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge, 26 Jan. 1748. He graduated as B.A. in 1753 (when he was senior wrangler), M.A. 1756, and D.D. 1789. He was admitted minor fellow in 1754, major fellow in 1756, and third sub-lector in 1757. From 1757 to 1771 he was regius professor of Hebrew. In 1777 he became vicar of Pluckley in Kent, a living in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, where he died 28 March 1807.
He published two sermons:
* ‘Sermon preached before the University of Cambridge, 28 June 1789, with some strictures on the licentious notions avowed or enumerated in Mr. Gibbon's “History of Rome,”’ Lond. 1709, 4to.
* ‘The Superiority of Religious Duties to Worldly Considerations,’ 1800, 8vo.
[Bibliotheca Britannica; Robinson's Register of Merchant Taylors' School; Register of Trinity College; Cooper's Memorials.]
E. S. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dixey, John

​DIXEY, JOHN (d. 1820), sculptor and modeller, was born in Dublin, but came when young to London and studied at the Royal Academy. Here, from the industry and talent he showed, he was one of those selected from the students to be sent to finish their education in Italy. He is stated to have exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1788, but his name cannot be traced, unless he is identical with John Dixon of Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell, who exhibited a design for a ceiling. In 1789, when on the point of leaving for Italy, he was offered advantages in America, which were sufficient to induce him to emigrate thither at once. Here he devoted himself with assiduity to the promotion and resuscitation of the arts in the United States, and after residing some years at New York was elected in 1810 or 1812 vice-president of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He died in 1820. Dixey's labours were principally employed in the ornamental and decorative embellishment of public and private buildings, such as the City Hall at New York, the State House at Albany, &c.; but he executed some groups in sculpture as well. He married in America, and left two sons, George and John V. Dixey, who both adopted their father's profession as modellers, but the latter subsequently turned his attention to landscape-painting.
L. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dix, John

​DIX, JOHN, alias John Ross (1800?–1865?), the biographer of Chatterton, was born in Bristol, and for some years practised as a surgeon in that city. He early showed talent in writing prose and verse, and published in 1837 a ‘Life of Chatterton,’ 8vo, which gave rise to great and bitter controversy. Prefixed to the volume was a so-called portrait of the ‘marvellous boy,’ engraved from a portrait found in the shop of a Bristol broker. On the back of the original engraving was found written the word ‘Chatterton.’ It was, says one of the opponents of Dix, ‘really taken from the hydrocephalous son of a poor Bristol printer named Morris’ (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ix. 294). Why the printer's boy should have his portrait engraved is not stated. Mr. Skeat, in the memoir of Chatterton prefixed to his edition of the poet's works, speaks highly of the appendix to Dix's ‘Life’ and its various contents. An account of the inquest held on the body of Chatterton, discovered by Dix, but which his assailants declare to be absolutely fictitious, appeared in ‘Notes and Queries’ (1853, p. 138). Leigh Hunt characterised Dix's biography as ‘heart-touching,’ adding that in addition to what was before known the author had gathered up all the fragements. Still, it is a fact that the disputed portrait was omitted from the second edition of Dix's biography, 1851. The report of the inquest was subjected to the criticism of Professor Masson and Dr. Maitland.
Dix went about 1846 to America, where he is supposed to have died, at a time not precisely ascertained. He published ‘Local Loiterings and Visits in Boston, by a Looker-on,’ 1846. Other works attributed to him are: ‘Lays of Home;’ ‘Local Legends of Bristol;’ ‘The Progress of Intemperance,’ 1839, obl. folio; ‘The Church Wreck,’ a poem on St. Mary's, Cardiff, 1842; ‘The Poor Orphan;’ ‘Jack Ariel, or Life on Board an Indiaman,’ 2nd edit. 1852, 3rd edit. 1859. In 1850 he sent forth ‘Pen-and-Ink Sketches of Eminent English Literary Personages, by a Cosmopolitan;’ in 1852 ‘Handbook to Newport and Rhode Island,’ as well as ‘Lions Living and Dead;’ and in 1853 ‘Passages from the Diary of a Wasted Life’ (an account of Gough, the temperance orator). The list of his known publications closes with ‘Pen Pictures of Distinguished American Divines,’ Boston, 1854. He is treated very severely as a literary forger by Mr. Moy Thomas in the ‘Athenæum’ (5 Dec. 1857 and 23 Jan. 1858), and by W. Thornbury and Mr. Buxton Forman in ‘Notes and Queries.’
R. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dixon, John (1740?-1780?)

Date of death 1811 in the ODNB.
​DIXON, JOHN (1740?–1780?), mezzotint engraver, was born in Dublin about 1740. He received his art training in the Dublin Society's schools, of which Robert West was then master, and began life as an engraver of silver plate. Having, however, run through a small fortune left to him by his father, he removed to London about 1765, and in the following year became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, with whom he exhibited until 1775. His portraits of Dr. Carmichael, bishop of Meath (afterwards archbishop of Dublin), after Ennis, and of Nicholas, viscount Taaffe, after Robert Hunter, appear to have been engraved before he left Ireland; but soon after his arrival in London he became known by his full-length portrait of Garrick in the character of ‘Richard III,’ after Dance. Some of his best plates were executed between 1770 and 1775; they are well drawn, brilliant, and powerful, but occasionally rather black. Dixon was a handsome man, and married a young lady with an ample fortune, whereupon he retired to Ranelagh, and thenceforward followed his profession merely for recreation. He afterwards removed to Kensington, where he died about 1780.
Dixon's best engravings are after the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and include full-length portraits of Mary, duchess of Ancaster, and Mrs. Blake as ‘Juno,’ and others of William, duke of Leinster, Henry, tenth earl of Pembroke, Elizabeth, countess of Pembroke, and her son, the Misses Crewe, Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, William Robertson, D.D., Nelly O'Brien, and Miss Davidson, a young lady whose death in 1767 caused her parents so much grief that they are said to have destroyed the plate and all the impressions they could obtain. Besides the portraits above mentioned, Dixon engraved a group of David Garrick as ‘Abel Drugger,’ with Burton and Palmer as ‘Subtle’ and ‘Face,’ after Zoffany; a full-length of Garrick alone, from the same picture; a half-length of Garrick, after Hudson; William, earl of Ancrum, afterwards fifth marquis of Lothian, full-length, after Gilpin and Cosway; Henry, third duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, and Joshua Kirby, after Gainsborough; Rev. James Hervey, after J. Williams; Sir William Browne, M.D., after Hudson; ‘Betty,’ a pretty girl who sold fruit near the Royal Exchange, after Falconet; and William Beckford, both full-length and three-quarter reversed, after a drawing by himself. Other plates by him are ‘The Frame Maker,’ after Rembrandt; ‘The Flute Player,’ after Frans Hals; and ‘The Arrest’ and ‘The Oracle,’ after his own designs. Forty plates by him are described by Mr. Chaloner Smith.
R. E. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/More, Alexander

​MORE, ALEXANDER (1616–1670), protestant divine and Milton's antagonist, was born on 25 Sept. 1616 at Castres in Languedoc, where his father, a Scotsman, was rector of the protestant college. He was educated at Castres and Geneva, where in 1639 he was elected to the chair of Greek over the head of Stephen Le Clerc, and in 1642 succeeded Frederic Spanheim in the chair of theology. Grave charges of heresy and immorality, which he was unable to repel, led in 1648 to his resignation. He was, however, in the following year elected, through the influence of Salmasius, to the chair of theology at Middelburg, which he resigned in 1652 for that of ecclesiastical history at Amsterdam. On the appearance of the anonymous 'Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cœlum adversus Parricidas Anglicanos' (1652), it was generally, though falsely, ascribed to More, who was merely its editor, and Milton, who believed the common report, made a violent attack upon the supposed author's personal character in his 'Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda' [cf. Moulin, Peter du].
More published a spirited defence of his life entitled 'Alexandri Mori Ecclesiastæ et Sacrarum Litterarum Professoris Fides Publica contra Calumnias Joannis Miltoni' (the Hague, 1654, 4to), but suffered Milton to have the last word. In 1655 he visited Italy, returned to Holland in May 1656 to find his reputation fatally damaged, and in 1659 he was compelled to resign his professorship. Nevertheless, the church at Charenton, near Paris, welcomed him as its pastor; and there, except for a brief sojourn in England in the winter of 1661-2, he remained till his death on 28 Sept. 1670. He was interred in the Charenton cemetery. He did not marry.
More was a fine scholar and an eloquent preacher; in theology he leaned towards Arminianism; unless grossly calumniated throughout his public career, his morals must have been far less strict than his theology. Besides the 'Fides Publica' More's remains comprise some volumes of sermons and theological treatises, a few Latin poems, a 'Panegyric' on Calvin, and some other miscellanea. A portrait of More by Vaillant, and four engravings, two by Pass and Visscher, are mentioned by Bromley.
J. M. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mordington, Lord

​MORDINGTON, Lord. [See Douglas, George, fourth Lord, d. 1741.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/More, Edward

Also contains material on the poet Edward More (1537?-1620).
​MORE, EDWARD (1479–1541), divine, described as of Havant, was born in 1479, and was elected a scholar of Winchester College in 1492. He seems to have afterwards proceeded to New College, Oxford, and supplicated for the degree of B.D. in 1518. From 1498 to 1502 he held a fellowship at Winchester, and was head-master from 1508 to 1517. He was at a later date appointed canon of Chichester, was instituted vicar of Isleworth on 3 March 1514-15, and on resigning that living in August 1521 became rector of Cranford (Newcourt, Repertorium, i. 595, 675). On 29 Oct. 1526 he was admitted the eighth warden of Winchester College, and held that office, together with the rectory of Cranford, till his death. From 1528 to 1531 he was also archdeacon of Lewes (Le Neve, i. 263). As a schoolmaster he was reckoned a stern disciplinarian. In the Latin poem descriptive of the wardens of Winchester (in Willes's 'Poemata,' 1573), Christopher Johnson [q. v.], the author, writes:
Qui legit hic Morum, qui non et sensit eundem,  Gaudeat, et secum molliter esse putet.
More died in 1541, and was buried in the choir of Winchester College Chapel.
Another Edward More (1537?–1620), born about 1537, was third son (by his wife Anne Cresacre) of John More, the only son of Sir Thomas More [q. v.] He wrote a poem in rhyming ballad metre, entitled 'A lytle and bryefe treatyse called the Defence of Women, and especially of Englyshe women, made agaynst "The Schole House" [i.e. a published denunciation of women by Edward Gosynhyll, q. v.],' London, by John Kynge, 1560, 4to. More's book was licensed for publication in 1557-8. Copies are in the Bodleian and British Museum libraries. The dedication, dated 20 July 1557, from Hambledon, Buckinghamshire, is addressed to Sir Philip Hoby [q. v.] Hambledon was the seat of John Scrope, whose daughter married Edward More's eldest brother, Thomas. More describes himself at the time as twenty years old. Wood states that he wrote 'several little things ' besides (Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 249-52). More's work was again licensed for publication to John Tisdale in 1563. Cresacre More, a nephew of Edward More, wrote of his uncle about 1600 that he was 'endowed with excellent gifts of nature, has a ready wit, tongue at will, and his pen glib, yet God knows he hath drowned all his talents in self-conceit in no worthy qualities.' He was buried at Barnborough, Yorkshire, on 2 May 1620. His sons Henry and Thomas, the jesuits, are noticed under Henry More, 1586-1661.
[Kirby's Winchester Scholars; Wood's Fasti Oxon.; H. C. Adams's Wykehamica, p. 75; Hazlitt's Bibliographical Collections; Ritson's Bibl.Poetica; Cresacre More's Life of Sir Thomas More, ed. Hunter, p. xlviii; cf. Foley's Records of Jesuits, xii. 702 sq.]
S. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Michelborne, Edward (1565-1626)

​MICHELBORNE, EDWARD (1565–1626), Latin poet, son of a gentleman of Hampshire, was brought up as a Roman catholic. The family of Michelborne was widely disseminated in Hampshire and Sussex, and from the Sussex branch of Bradhurst sprang John Michelborne [q. v.], the governor of Londonderry (cf. Berry, Sussex Genealogies, p. 50). Edward the poet had two brothers, Thomas and Lawrence (Fitgeffrey, Affaniæ, 1601, p. 165). He matriculated at Oxford as a commoner of St. Mary Hall on 27 March 1579, aged 14, and afterwards migrated to Gloucester Hall, but took no degree owing to religious scruples. He appears to have lived most of his life at Oxford, and was, according to Wood, ‘the most noted Latin poet in the university.’ His compositions, which Wood declares to have been numerous, seem mainly to have been contributed to books by his friends. ‘The poets of his time,’ writes Wood, ‘did mostly submit their labours to his judgment before they were made public.’ His closest friends were Charles Fitzgeffrey [q. v.] and Thomas Campion [q. v.] Fitzgeffrey dedicated his ‘Affaniæ,’ 1601, to him, and inscribed seven other poems in the volume to him, besides printing some complimentary ​ Latin verses by Michelborne. Four of Campion's ‘Latin Epigrams,’ 1619, are addressed to him in very affectionate terms (bk. i. nos. 180, 192, bk. ii. nos. 77, 121). Both Campion and Fitzgeffrey lament the modesty which prevented their friend from publishing his verse. Two poems by Michelborne in praise of the author are prefixed to ‘The Art of Brachygraphy,’ 1597, of Peter Bales [q. v.], and he is a contributor to ‘Camdeni Insignia,’ 1624. Michelborne died at Oxford on 27 Dec. 1626, and was buried in the church of St. Thomas the Martyr.
Fitzgeffrey inscribes several poems in his ‘Affaniæ’ to Edward's brothers—three to Thomas (pp. 84, 165), and two to Lawrence (pp. 5, 32), while each brother is the subject of an epigram by Campion (bk. ii. no. 34 on Lawrence and no. 69 on Thomas). Lawrence was residing at Oxford in 1594, although his name does not appear in the university register (Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc., II. i. 318). Thomas prefixed Latin hexameters—‘In Dracum Redivivum Carmen’—to the first edition, and some English stanzas to the second edition of Fitzgeffrey's poem on ‘Sir Francis Drake,’ 1596. English commendatory verses by him also figure in Thomas Storer's poetic ‘Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, Cardinall,’ 1599, and in Sir William Vaughan's ‘Golden Grove,’ 1608.
[Wood's Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 428; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica, pp. 278, 283; Campion's Works, ed. Bullen, pp. 301, 304, 323, 332, 346.]
S. L.