OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Shilling, Andrew

​SHILLING, ANDREW (d. 1621), commander in the East India Company, was originally a petty officer in the royal navy. From this position he gradually raised himself to the higher ranks of the service, and on 30 May 1603 he became for life one of the six chief masters of the navy (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–10, p. 11). In 1617 he obtained leave from the admiralty to take part in the fifth expedition undertaken by the East India Company, and he sailed from Gravesend on 4 Feb. as master of the Gift, one of a squadron of five, under the command of Martin Pring. On the voyage out he captured a Portuguese vessel from Mozambique laden with a cargo of elephants' teeth (Purchas his Pilgrimes, i. 632). At Surat he was placed in command of the Angel, a vessel formerly belonging to the Dutch, and in it he conveyed home Sir Thomas Roe [q. v.] He arrived in England in the autumn of 1618. The company immediately obtained leave from the Duke ​of Buckingham to employ him on another voyage. On 25 Feb. 1619 Shilling sailed from Tilbury on board the London as chief commander of a squadron of four vessels. They first proceeded to Surat; thence Shilling despatched two of his fleet—the Hart and the Eagle—to the Persian Gulf, and followed them with his own vessel and the Roebuck. On the way he captured a Portuguese ship laden with a cargo of horses, and soon after met his other vessels returning, who reported the Portuguese to be very strong. Shilling, however, resolved to attack them, and on 19 Dec. 1620 engaged them near Jask on the coast of Persia. The first conflict was unfavourable to the English; but on Christmas day the battle was renewed, and, though, owing to a calm, the London and the Hart were alone able to come into action, they completely defeated the Portuguese and compelled them to fly. Shilling, however, was mortally wounded, and died seven days later on 1 Jan. 1621.
E. I. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Shields, Alexander

​SHIELDS, ALEXANDER (1660?–1700). [See Sheilds.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Shipley, Georgiana

​SHIPLEY, GEORGIANA (d. 1806), artist. [See under Hare-Naylor, Francis.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Shiels, Robert

​SHIELS, SHIELLS, or SHIELDS, ROBERT (d. 1753), compiler, of humble origin, was born in Roxburghshire about the end of the seventeenth century, and came to London as a journeyman printer. Though he lacked education, he had ‘a very acute understanding’ and a retentive memory. Johnson, to whom he was further recommended by his devout Jacobitism, employed him as an amanuensis upon the ‘Dictionary,’ along with Peyton, Alexander Macbean [q. v.], and three others. At the conclusion of that work Shiels was recommended to Griffiths and employed upon the ‘Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift’ (London, 5 vols. 8vo, 1753), to which the name of ‘Mr. Cibber’ was attached. The compilation was based ​upon Langbaine and Jacobs, with the aid of Coxeter's notes, and contains little original matter. Any research displayed was due to Shiels, but the whole work was revised by Theophilus Cibber [q. v.] The later volumes are ascribed on the title-page to Cibber ‘and other hands.’ Johnson was in error in attributing the whole credit of the work to his former assistant. Apart from his compilations, Shiels wrote a didactic poem on ‘Marriage’ in blank verse (London, ‘at the Dunciad in Ludgate Street,’ 1748, 4to), and another piece in praise of Johnson's ‘Irene,’ called ‘The Power of Beauty’ (printed in Pearch's ‘Collection,’ i. 186). Above even Dr. Johnson Shiels venerated his countryman, James Thomson, upon whose death he published an elegy of some merit—‘Musidorus’ (London, 1748, 4to). But his admiration for the poet seems to have been rather more fatuous than discriminating, if Johnson may be believed. ‘I once read him,’ says the latter, ‘a long passage of Thomson. “Is not this very fine?” I said. “Splendid!” exclaimed Shiels. “Well, sir, I have omitted every other line.”’ Shiels died of consumption in May's Buildings, London, on 27 Dec. 1753. ‘His life was virtuous,’ says the doctor, ‘and his end pious.’
[Gent. Mag. 1753, p. 590; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. v. 308; Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, ii. 329; Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, iii. 30, and ed. Croker, p. 504; Monthly Rev. May 1792; D'Israeli's Curiosities of Lit. 1834, iii. 375; Morel's Vie de James Thomson, 1896, p. 176; Cibber's Lives of the Poets (with manuscript notes in British Museum).]
T. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Blith, Walter

​BLITH, WALTER (fl. 1649), agricultural writer, issued in 1649 a work entitled 'The English Improver, or a new Survey of Husbandry. . . . Held forth under Six Peeces of Improvement. By Walter Blith, a Lover of Ingenuity,' London, 1649. This edition has two dedications: one ' To thole of the High and Honourable Houses of Parliament; ' and another 'To the Ingenuous Header.' Of this book Thorold Rogers says in his 'Six Centuries of Work and Wages' (p. 458): 'The particulars are those commonplaces of agriculture which are found in all treatises of the time.' In 1652 it was re-issued in a revised form as * The English Improver Improved, or the Survey of Husbandry Surveyed,' with 'a second part containing six newer peeces of improvement,' and with an engraved titlepage headed 'Vive la Republick,' which contained representations of horse- and footsoldiers, and of agricultural operations. The edition of 1652 contains seven dedications or preliminary epistles: to 'The Right Honourable the Lord Generall Cromwell, and the Council of State;' to 'The Nobility and Gentry;' to 'The Industrious Reader;' to 'The Houses of Court and Universities; ' to 'The Honourable the Souldiery of these Nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland;' to 'The Husbandman, Farmer, or Tenant;' to 'The Cottager, Labourer, or meanest Commoner.' In the first dedication Blith refers to eight 'prejudices to improvements,' the first of which is interesting from the point of view of the history of tenant-right and Agricultural Holdings Acts. 'If a tenant be at never so great paines or cost for the Improvement of his Land, he doth thereby but occasion a greater Rack upon himself, or else invests his Land-Lord into his cost and labour gratis, or at best lyes at his Land-Lord's mercy for requitall, which occasions a neglect of all good Husbandry, to his owne, the land, the Land-Lord, and the Common wealth's suffering. Now this I humbly conceive may be removed, if there were a Law Inacted by which every Land-Lord should be obliged either to give him reasonable allowance for his cleare Improvement, or else suffer him or his to enjoy it so much longer as till he hath had a proportionable requitall.' In the fifth dedication Blith signs himself 'Your quondam brother, fellow-souldier, and very servant, Walter Blith,' and some commendatory verses prefixed to the book, signed ' T. C.,' are addressed 'To Captain W. Blith upon his Improvement.' He would therefore seem to have been a captain in the parliamentary army. There was a 'Captain Blith' of the king's ship Vanguard in 1642.
[Blith's English Improver, 1649, 1652.]
E. C.-e.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Blew, William John

​BLEW, WILLIAM JOHN (1808–1894), liturgiologist, only son of William Blew of St. James's, Westminster, was born in that parish on 13 April 1808, and educated with John Henry (afterwards Cardinal) Newman [q. v.] at St. Nicholas's school, Ealing, and at Oxford, where he matriculated from Wadham College in October 1825. He was elected Goodridge exhibitioner of Wadham in 1826, graduated B.A. on 13 May 1830, and M.A. on 13 June 1832. He was curate of Nuthurst, Sussex, from 1832 to 1840, being ordained deacon in 1832 and priest by the bishop of Chichester in 1834. From 1840 to 1842 he was curate of St. Anne's, Soho, and in 1842 became incumbent of St. John's, Milton-next-Gravesend, where he was free to give a high church tone to the services. In 1850, owing to a difference with his bishop, he retired from active clerical work and devoted himself mainly to liturgical and theological studies. He had married after his father's death in 1845, and resided at his father's house, 6 Warwick Street, Pall Mall East, where he died, aged 86, on 28 Dec. 1894.
Blew was a scholar of some repute. He published translations of the 'Iliad' in 1831, Æschylus's 'Agamemnon' in 1855, and ​Euripides's 'Medea' in English verse in 1887. He also edited, under the title 'Queen Mary,' two plays by Dekker and Webster and by Thomas Heywood, viz.: 'The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat' and 'If you know not me, you know nobody; or, the Troubles of Queen Elizabeth' (London, 1876, 8vo). But his chief interest lay in ecclesiology, and probably his most solid work was his edition of the 'Aberdeen Breviary' for the Bannatyne Club in 1854. In 1852 he published, with his friend Henry John Gauntlett [q. v.], 'The Church Hymn and Tune Book,' which reached a second edition in 1855. The hymns, which are chiefly translations from the Latin by Blew, 'are terse, vigorous, musical, and of great merit' (Julian). The volume also contains several original hymns by Blew. This was followed by 'Hymns and Hymn Books,' 1858, 8vo, and in 1877 by an edition of the 1548 'Altar Service of the Church of England.'
[Guardian, 9 Jan. 1895; Church Times, 4 Jan. 1895; Times, 29 Dec. 1894; Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1894; Julian's Dict. of Hymnology; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715-1886; R. B. Gardiner's Register of Wadham; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vii. 6.]
A. F. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Bland, Nathaniel

​BLAND, NATHANIEL (1803–1865), Persian scholar, born 3 Feb. 1803, was the only son of Nathaniel Bland of Randalls Park, Leatherhead. His father's name was originally Crumpe, but after leaving Ireland and purchasing Randalls Park he took, in 1812, the surname of his mother, Dorothea, daughter of Dr. Bland of Derriquin Castle, co. Kerry, an eminent civilian.
Bland entered Eton in 1818, matriculated ​from Christ Church, Oxford, in October 1821, and graduated B.A. in 1825. He was an elegant Persian scholar, and between 1843 and 1853 contributed several valuable papers to the Royal Asiatic Society's 'Journal.' The first, read June 1843 (vol. vii.), was a notice of the Atash Kada, a collection of lives of poets. This and a supplementary article in vol. ix. of the 'Journal' are still standard authorities on the subject. In 1847 he contributed an elaborate article on Persian chess, which was afterwards published separately. He also described the Pote collection of oriental manuscripts in the Eton College library [see Pote, Joseph] in the Royal Asiatic Society's 'Journal' (orig. series, vol. viii. 104-6). His last contribution to the 'Journal,' in 1853, was on the Muhammadan science of the interpretation of dreams. In 1844 he edited Nizämï's 'Makhzun-al-Asrar' for the Oriental Translation Fund. But unfortunately he did not finish this work. The latter part of his life was calamitous. He took to gambling, had to sell Randalls Park, and eventually committed suicide at Hombourg-les-Bainson 10 Aug.1865. His valuable collection of Persian and other manuscripts was sold through Bernard Quaritch in 1866 and purchased by the Earl of Crawfurd. It now forms part of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana.
[Proceedings of the E.A.S., vol. ii. N.S. p. 3; Annual Report of June 1866.]
H. B-e.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Leland, John (d.1428)

John Leylond in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 1904 Errata appended.
​LELAND or LEYLOND, JOHN, the elder (d. 1428), grammarian, was perhaps a native of Lancashire, and studied at Oxford, where he afterwards taught as a grammarian, and acquired so great a reputation that it was said of him:—
Ut rosa flos florum, sic Leland grammaticorum.
He resided at Vine Hall, and dying 30 April 1428 was buried in the lady-chapel at St. Frideswide's. On 4 July 1435 the chancellor of the university ordered all cautions, &c., deposited with John Leland, lately deceased, to be sold. There are some laudatory epigrams on Leland by John Seguard in Merton College MS. 299. Leland was probably collaterally related to his namesake, the famous antiquary. The spelling Leylond is that of the manuscripts of his works.
He wrote:
* ‘Distinctiones Rhetoricæ,’ Bodley MS. 832, ff. 1–8.
* ‘Præterita et supina verborum secundum Magistrum Johannem Leylond, Oxoniæ, 1414,’ manuscript in Lincoln Cathedral Library.
* ‘Liber Accidentium,’ MS. Worcester Cathedral Library, 123 (Bernard, Cat. MSS. Angliæ, ii. 19).
* ‘Fundamentalis instructio puerorum,’ formerly in the monastery of Sion.
In Bodley MS. 832 there are various short treatises, such as ‘De modo punctandi,’ ‘Hymnarium compendiose compilatum,’ ‘De Accentu,’ which it has been suggested may be by Leland, but there is no proof of this except that the second article in the volume contains this odd colophon:—
Exit origo rei, memor esto Johannis, Semper amicus ejus sis in amore Dei; Nomen scriptoris J. L., de precibus rogo, noris.
The whole volume appears to be in one handwriting.
[Leland's Comment. de Scriptt. 445; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 475; Wood's City of Oxford, ii. 194 (Oxford Hist. Soc.); information kindly supplied by F. Madan, esq., of the Bodleian Library, and by John Leyland, esq.]
C. L. K.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.181 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 18 | i | 17 f.e. | Leland, John (d. 1428): for ei' read ejus |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Leintwarden, Thomas

Thomas Leintwardine in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
​LEINTWARDEN or LEYNTWARDYN, THOMAS, D.D. (d. 1421), chancellor of St. Paul's, was born in Herefordshire, and educated at Oxford, where he became master of arts and doctor of divinity, and was appointed fellow of Oriel College (before 1386), dean, and afterwards provost (1417-21). His election as provost was disputed for nearly two years (cf. Tyler, Henry V.) He is thought to have compiled in 1397 a register of the college muniments, which is still extant {Colleges of Oxford, p. 99, ed. Clark). He supported the archbishop against certain Lollard fellows of the college. Two manuscripts that belonged to Leintwarden are in Oriel and Merton libraries respectively. He was ordained acolyte on 18 Feb. 1390, and deacon 1392 (Register of Braybroke, bishop of London, ap. Tanner). In 1401 he succeeded John Godmanston as chancellor of St. Paul's. He refused at first to vacate his fellowship at Oriel on receiving this appointment, but seems to have done so before 1409.
He was still chancellor of St. Paul's in 1417. At a synod held by Archbishop Chichele on 26 Nov. in that year in London, proposals were adopted with a view to remedying the complaint of the scholars of Oxford and Cambridge that they were excluded from rewards and benefices, and Leintwarden was sent with the dean of Hereford to obtain the consent of his own university to these proposals. But the masters rejected the scheme, because it gave better benefices to the doctors than to them. Leintwarden died probably near the end of 1421. He was author of a 'Commentary upon the Epistles of St. Paul,' in fourteen books, and John Whethamstede, abbot of St. Albans, who highly praised Leintwarden in his 'De granis typicis,' ordered the work to be transcribed for the use of his monastery. The commentary is not now known to be extant.
Tanner confuses him with a contemporary Richard Lentwardyn, private chaplain to Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury, who was presented by the dean and chapter of Canterbury, sede vacante, to the living of Aldington, near Hythe, in the archbishop's gift, on 1 Dec. 1390 (Courtenay's Register in Lambeth Palace Library; 1391 according to Hasted, Hist, of Kent) iii. 463). This Richard Lentwardyn was collated by the archbishop to Chartbam, near Canterbury, on 20 July 1392 (ib. p. 146). He was still rector of Chartbam in 1396. A Richard Lentwardyn exchanged some other preferment for the archdeaconry of Cornwall with Robert Braybroke on 5 April 1396 (Pat. 18 Ric. II, p. 2, m. 16, ap. Le Neve, Fasti, i. 398).
[Bale's Scriptt. Brit. cent. xii. No. 8; Pits, De Illustr. Angliæ Script. App. p. 886; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Wood's Hist. of Univ. of Oxford, i. 562 (Gutch), Hist. of Colleges and Halls, p. 126 (Gutch); Newcourt's Repert. Paroch. Londin. i. 113; Wilkins's Concilia, iii. 381; Hook's Lives of Archbishops, v. 110, ed. 1867; information from Oriel College Archives supplied by C. L. Shadwell, esq.]
J. T-t.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Leland, Thomas

​LELAND, THOMAS, D.D. (1722–1785), historian, was born in Dublin in 1722, and after education at the school of Dr. Thomas Sheridan [q. v.], entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1737. He graduated B.A. 1741, and was elected a fellow in 1746. In 1754, with Dr. John Stokes, he published a text and Latin translation with notes of ‘The Philippic Orations of Demosthenes.’ He was one of the men of letters who used to visit Lord Charlemont at Marino; he was very intimate with all the Caulfeild family, and a long letter from him to Charlemont is printed in ‘Historical Manuscripts Commission,’ 12th Rep. App. x. p. 278. Charlemont persuaded him to publish an English translation of ‘The Orations of Demosthenes against Philip,’ which appeared in parts from 1754 to 1761, and in a complete edition in 1770, and was frequently reissued. In 1758 he published, in two volumes quarto, ‘The History of Philip, King of Macedon,’ and in 1764 ‘A Dissertation on the Principles of Human Eloquence.’ A second edition appeared in 1765, with strictures on Warburton's ‘Discource on Grace.’ This gave rise to a controversy in which Bishop Hurd [q. v.] was his chief opponent. He was appointed to the vicarage of Bray, co. Wicklow, and there began in 1768 his ‘History of Ireland from the Invasion of Henry II, with a preliminary Discourse on the Ancient State of that Kingdom,’ which was published in three volumes quarto in 1773 (3rd edit. 1774). A French translation in seven volumes was published in 1779 at Maestricht. The history contains few references to original authorities, and is in great part based upon the writings of Moryson, Ware, Cox, Harris, and Carte. It is a dry narrative, and exhibits little knowledge of topography or of literature. It concludes with the capitulation of Limerick in 1691. Richard Shackleton was induced by an anonymous correspondent, who pretended to be Leland, to write his opinion of the book to the author, and this led to a real correspondence on the history, which Shackleton approved. In 1766 Leland bought the Irish manuscript chronicle, since printed as the ‘Annals of Loch Cé,’ and gave it to the library of Trinity College. This was perhaps his greatest service to Irish history. He was installed a prebendary of St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1768, and in 1773 he became vicar of St. Anne's, Dublin. In 1774 Charlemont supported his unsuccessful candidature for the provostship of Trinity College. He resided at 18 Clare Street, Dublin. Two of his sermons on days of appointed fast, 13 Dec. 1776 and 10 Feb. 1779, were published separately, and a collected volume, ‘Sermons on Various Subjects,’ in 1788 in Dublin. He gave up his fellowship for the college living of Ardstraw, co. Tyrone, in 1781, and died in Dublin in August 1785. Leland was a friend of Burke, and Edward Murphy called him ‘the most charitable man alive.’
Leland's portrait was painted by Reynolds and engraved by Stainer.
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Leith, Theodore Forbes

​LEITH, THEODORE FORBES, M.D. (1746–1819), physician, second son of John Forbes Leith and Jean Morrison, was born in 1746 in Aberdeenshire. He studied medicine in the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. 12 Sept. 1768. His thesis was read 31 Aug. 1768, and was published at the University Press. It is on the delirium of fever, is dedicated to William Cullen [q. v.] and John Gregory [q. v.], his instructors, and shows some subtlety of distinction and of argument. He practised at Greenwich, and was elected F.R.S. in 1781, and 26 June 1786 licentiate of the College of Physicians of London. In 1806, on the death of his elder brother, he inherited Whitehaugh, Aberdeenshire, went to reside there, and there he died, after breaking his clavicle, 6 Sept. 1819. He married Marie d'Arboine in 1776, and had six children.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 361; Thomson's Hist. of Royal Soc.; Thesis.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ward, William James

​WARD, WILLIAM JAMES (1800?–1840), mezzotint engraver, born about 1800, was the son of William Ward (1766–1826) [q. v.], by his wife Maria, sister of George Morland [q. v.] Under his father's teaching his talent for art showed itself very early, and he gained three medals from the Society of Arts for drawings (1813–15). He became engraver to the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV). He engraved ‘The Marriage of St. Catherine,’ after Van Dyck; ‘The Infant Hercules,’ after Reynolds; ‘Garrick in the Green-room,’ after Hogarth, and numerous portraits after John Jackson and others, among them those of Prince George of Cambridge, Earl Grey, Admiral Durham, Lady Anne Vernon Harcourt, Sir John Conroy, George Canning, Thomas Moore, and John Jackson. He became insane some time before his death, which took place on 1 March 1840.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers; Gent. Mag. 1840, i. 439.]
C. D.