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

​COOK, RICHARD (1784–1857), historical painter, was born in London in 1784. He obtained admission into the schools of the Royal Academy when sixteen years of age, and received the Society of Arts gold medal in 1832. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy ‘A Landscape,’ in 1808. At that period he resided at 41 North Audley Street, Grosvenor Square; in the same year he sent to the British Institution ‘The Agony of Christ’ and ‘Hector reproving Paris.’ In 1814 he had in the Royal Academy a portrait of Mr. G. F. Cooke, and ‘Acis and Galatea,’ afterwards engraved by W. Taylor. He now lived at 12 Greek Street, Soho Square. In 1816, being elected an associate, he sent from 50 Upper Marylebone Street five pictures, viz.: four from the ‘Lady of the Lake,’ and ‘Ceres, disconsolate for the loss of Proserpine, rejects the solicitation of Iris, sent to her by Jupiter.’ In 1822, Cook was elected a full academician, and from that time forward he almost seems to have relinquished his profession. He married a lady with fortune, which enabled him to entertain liberally his brother artists. He died in Cumberland Place, Hyde Park, on 11 March 1857. A sale of his pictures, sketches, prints, &c., took place at Christie & Manson's 1 June 1857. Among the lots there was Stothard's ‘George III and Queen, sitting, surrounded by a family of boys and girls.’ In the department of prints and drawings, British Museum, are preserved several drawings, chiefly studies for book illustrations, executed in 1806; a large study for the ‘Lady of the Lake’; a charming portrait of Mrs. Cook, seen full face, three-quarter length, executed in pencil and slightly tinted; and an interesting folio volume containing numerous carefully drawn figures, furniture, arms, &c., eighth to fifteenth centuries. Cook illustrated the following works: Sharpe's ‘Classics,’ Fénelon's ‘Telemachus,’ ‘The Grecian Daughter,’ ‘Apollonius Rhodius,’ Miller's ‘Shakespeare,’ Homer's ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’ Goldsmith's ‘Miscellaneous and Poetical Works,’ Churchill's ‘Poems,’ ‘Ovid's Metamorphoses’ by Dr. Garth, Dryden's ‘Virgil,’ Tasso's ‘Jerusalem Delivered,’ by Hoole, &c.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of the English School, Lond. 8vo, 1878; manuscript notes in the British Museum.]
L. F.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cook, Robert (1646?-1726?)

Robert Cooke in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
​COOK, ROBERT (1646?–1726?), vegetarian, son of Robert Cook, esq., of Cappoquin, co. Waterford, was born about 1646. He was a very rich and eccentric gentleman, and generally went by the name of ‘Linen Cook,’ because he wore only linen garments, and used linen generally for other purposes. During the troubles in the reign of James II he fled to England and resided for some time at Ipswich (Addit. MS. 19166, f. 64). During his absence the parliament held at Dublin on 7 May 1689 declared him to be attainted as a traitor if he failed to return to Ireland by 1 Sept. following. His first wife was a Bristol lady, and in consequence of his visits to that city he caused a pile of stones to be erected on a rock in the Bristol Channel, which, after him, was called ‘Cook's Folly.’ By his second wife, whose name was Cecilia or Cicily, he had three sons and two daughters (Burke, Patrician, iv. 64). He died about 1726, and by his will directed that his body should be interred in the cathedral or church called ‘Tempul’ at Youghal, and that his shroud should be made ‘of linen.’
Cook was ‘a kind of Pythagorean philosopher, and for many years neither eat fish, flesh, butter, &c., nor drank any kind of fermented liquor, nor wore woollen clothes, or and other produce of an animal, but linen’ (C. Smith, Ancient and Present State of Waterford, edit. 1774, p. 371). In 1691 he published a paper (reprinted in Smith's ‘Waterford’), giving an explanation of his peculiar religious principles. The Athenian Society wrote an answer to his paper and refuted his notions.
[Authorities cited above.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cook, John Douglas

​COOK, JOHN DOUGLAS (1808?–1868), editor of the ‘Saturday Review,’ was born at Banchory-Ternan in Aberdeenshire, probably in 1808, though, according to his own belief, he was born in 1811. At an early age he obtained an appointment in India, probably through an uncle, one of the Sir George Roses. He quarrelled with his employers in India, returned, as he used to relate, on foot for a great part of the way, and found himself in destitution in London. He tried literature, and at last sent an article without his name to the ‘Times.’ Upon its acceptance he made himself known, and became a friend of Walter, the proprietor. He was also known to Murray, for whom he indexed the early volumes of the ‘Quarterly Review,’ and through Murray he became known to the fifth Lord Stanhope. When Walter was elected for Nottingham as a tory in 1841, Cook accompanied him to help in the election. He there made acquaintance with Lord Lincoln (afterwards fifth duke of Newcastle), who became chief commissioner of woods and forests in Peel's administration. Lord Lincoln sent a commission into Cornwall to inquire into the revenues of the duchy, and made Cook its secretary. The work came to an end about 1848. Some of the ‘Peelite’ party, to which Lincoln belonged, had bought ​ the ‘Morning Chronicle’ to be their organ, and Cook was appointed to the editorship. He showed great ability, and spent money lavishly. The paper, though of the highest character, did not pay; and in 1854 Cook ceased to be editor on its sale to other proprietors. He had collected many able contributors, who supported him in the ‘Saturday Review,’ started in November 1855 on a new plan. The ‘Saturday Review’ under his editorship almost immediately took the first place among weekly papers, and in some respects the first place in periodical literature. Many of the contributors have since become eminent in various directions. Though not possessed of much literary culture, Cook had a singular instinct for recognising ability in others and judgment in directing them, which made him one of the most efficient editors of his day. In his later years he had a house at Boscastle, Cornwall, where he spent brief vacations; but he was seldom absent from London. He continued to edit the ‘Saturday Review’ till his death, 10 Aug. 1868.
[Information from the Right Hon. A. J. B. Beresford Hope.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cook, James (d.1611)

​COOK, JAMES (d. 1611), divine, was a native of Chale in the Isle of Wight, and received his education at Winchester school, whence he was elected to New College, Oxford, of which he became perpetual fellow Jan. 1592–3. On 29 Oct. 1597 he was admitted B.C.L. at Oxford, and he was incorporated in that degree at Cambridge in 1607. He was created D.C.L. at Oxford on 16 April 1608, about which time he was rector of Houghton in Hampshire, and chaplain to Bilson, bishop of Winchester. It is said that he was also archdeacon of Winton, but this statement is probably erroneous. He died in 1611.
He was author of:
* ‘Juridica trium Quæstionum ad Majestatem pertinentium Determinatio, in quarum prima et ultima Processus judicialis contra H. Garnettum institutus ex Jure Civili et Canonico defenditur, &c.,’ Oxford, 1608, 4to; dedicated to Bishop Bilson.
* Poemata varia.
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. iii. 39; Walcott's Wykeham, 409; Witte's Diarium Biographicum; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 95; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 275, 326.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clover, Joseph

​CLOVER, JOSEPH (1725–1811), farrier, son of a blacksmith at Norwich, was born in that city on 12 Aug. 1725, and followed for many years his father's calling. About 1750 he attracted the notice of Dr. Kervin Wright, a fellow-townsman, by whom he was encouraged to apply himself to the investigation and treatment of the diseases of horses. By dint of extraordinary application he so far mastered Latin and French as to be able to read in the original the best authors on farriery and medicine, particularly Vegetius and La Fosse. He also became a good mathematician. In 1765 his reputation had increased so much that he left off working at the forge to devote himself entirely to veterinary practice. In this he was assisted by many well-known medical men of that day, especially by Mr. Benjamin Gooch, the surgeon, who inserted in his 'Cases and Practical Remarks in Surgery' a letter from Clover, giving a description and a drawing of a machine invented by him for the cure of ruptured tendons and fractured legs in horses. As early as 1753 he had discovered the manner in which the larvae of the bots are conveyed from the coat of the horse into the stomach. Ill-health obliged him to decline business in 1781. He died at Norwich on 19 Feb. 1811.
[Gent. Mag. vol. lxxxi. pt. ii. pp. 191-2.]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clowes, Butler

Death c. 1788 in the ODNB.
​CLOWES, BUTLER (d. 1782), mezzotint-engraver and printseller, lived in Gutter Lane, Cheapside, where he kept a print-shop, his address appearing on engravings by James Watson and others. He scraped several portraits in mezzotint, usually from the life, some of which he sent to the exhibitions of the Free Society of Artists from 1768 to 1773. Among these portraits, which show some artistic ability, were those of himself, his wife, John Augustus Clowes, John Glas (founder of the Glassite, or Sandemanian, sect), Nathan Potts, Mrs. Luke Sullivan, after Tilly Kettle, and Charles Dibdin as Mungo in the opera of the 'Padlock.' He also engraved in mezzotint, after Philip Dawe, 'The Hen-pecked Husband' and 'The Dying Usurer,' both exhibited in 1768; after John Collet, 'A Rescue, or the Tars Triumphant,' 'Grown Gentlemen taught to dance,' and 'The Female Bruisers,' exhibited in 1771; after Heemskerk, and Stubbs, and a print entitled 'Domestic Employment Starching,' probably after Henry Morland. He died in 1782. An etched portrait of Clowes, published by S. Harding, Pall Mall, in 1802, shows a man past the prime of life, with a round, jovial, and doubtless rubicund countenance. The general tone of his prints and the character of his associates tend to support the idea that he was of a free and lively disposition. He does not appear to have been a painter himself.
[Redgrave's Dictionary of English Artists; Graves's Dictionary of Artists, 1760-1880; Catalogues of the Free Society of Artists; J. Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotint Portraits; Bromley's Catalogue of British Portraits; Nagler's Künstler-Lexikon; Collectanea Biographica (Anderdon) in the Print Room, British Museum.]
L. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clowes, William (1780-1851)

​CLOWES, WILLIAM (1780–1851), primitive methodist, son of William Clowes, potter, and of Ann, daughter of Aaron Wedgwood, was born at Burslem, Staffordshire, on 12 March 1780, and employed during his early years as a working potter. He was considered one of the finest dancers in his neighbourhood, aspired to be the premier dancer in the kingdom, and gave a challenge to all England. For many years he led a dissipated life, but on 20 Jan. 1815 was converted. He soon established a prayer-meeting in his own house, became the leader of a Wesleyan methodist class, and joined a society which endeavoured to promote the better keeping of the Sunday. He was one of the attendants at the first camp-meeting ever held in England, which was at Mow Hill, near Harrisehead, on 31 May 1807, and was joined in this meeting by Hugh and James Bourne and others. In October 1808 he preached his trial sermon and was duly appointed a local preacher, but, continuing to associate with the Bournes and to attend camp-meetings, his name was omitted from the preachers plan in June 1810, and in September his quarterly ticket as a member of the society was withheld from him. After this he made common cause with H. and J. Bourne and J. Crawfort, and with them was one of the founders of the primitive methodist connexion, which dates its commencement from 14 March 1810 [see Bourne, Hugh]. From this time forward he became one of the best-known preachers of the new society, and his labours in most of the northern counties of England, as well as in London and Cornwall, were most successful in adding members to the church. In 1819 he visited Hull, where primitive methodism was as yet unknown, and such was the force and earnestness of his preaching that in six months three hundred persons joined the society. On 10 June 1842 he was placed on the superannuation fund, but still continued his labours as before, and was at his work until a day or two before his decease, which took place, from paralysis, at Hull on 2 March 1851. He was a man of strong common sense and of great mental powers.
[Davison's Life of W. Clowes, 1854 (with portrait); Petty's Primitive Methodist Connexion, 1864 (with portrait).]
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clowes, William (1582-1648)

​CLOWES, WILLIAM, the younger (1582–1648), surgeon, son of William Clowes the elder (1540?–1604) [q. v.], surgeon to Queen Elizabeth, studied his art under his father. He was admitted a member of the Barber-Surgeons' Company 22 Jan. 1605. In 1616 he was surgeon to the Prince of Wales (Devon, Issues of Exchequer), and became surgeon to Charles I on his accession. In 1625 he was chosen renter warden of his company, but protested against a king's surgeon being appointed to so low an office, and declined to serve. On 21 Aug. 1626, being then sergeant surgeon to the king, he was elected master of the Barber-Surgeons, and on 16 Aug. 1638 he was a second time elected master. It was the duty of the king's sergeant surgeon to examine all persons brought to be cured by the royal touch (Douglas, The Criterion, ed. 1820, p. 479), and in this capacity Clowes complained of one Leverett, a gardener, who took on himself to cure the king's evil. Leverett was brought before the lords at the Star-chamber 20 Oct. 1637, and Clowes was by them directed to lay the matter before the College of Physicians. Leverett accordingly appeared at the college 3 Nov. 1637, and stated that he cured, by touch alone, king's evil, dropsy, fevers, agues, internal diseases, and external sores, and that, though he did not lay much stress on it, he was a seventh son. A patient with a strumous knee-joint and other cases were given him to experiment on, and on his failure Clowes presented, 28 Nov. 1637, a memorial recounting that Leverett slighted his majesty's sacred gift of healing, enticed great lords and ladies to buy the sheets he had slept in, and deluded the sick with false hopes. He produced certificates from Thomas Clowes and two other surgeons in the city as to Leverett's impostures, and finally, by an extract from the register of St. Clement, Eastcheap, proved that James Leverett was a fourth and not a seventh son, and that his father had but six sons in all. The college thereupon reported to the lords that Leverett was an impostor and deceiver. The last appearance of Clowes in the Barber-Surgeons' Company was on 14 Sept. 1648, and he died a few months later.
[Original manuscript records of the Barbers' Company preserved in their hall; Goodall's Royal Coll. of Phys. London, 1684.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clowes, William (1779-1847)

​CLOWES, WILLIAM, the elder (1779–1847), printer, was born 1 Jan. 1779, at Chichester, where his father kept a school, and where he was apprenticed to a printer of the name of Seagrave. He came to London in 1802, and, after working as a compositor with Mr. Teape of Tower Hill, commenced business in the following year on a small scale on his own account in Villiers Street, Strand. He then married a cousin of Mr. Winchester, a stationer in the Strand, through whom he obtained a share of the government printing work. After some years' residence in Villiers ​Street, Clowes removed to larger premises, previously occupied by Mr. Clark, in Northumberland Court, Charing Cross, where (in 1823) he was the first to make use of steam machinery for bookwork printing. He was obliged to rebuild on account of a fire, and to defend an action for nuisance caused by his new engines brought by a neighbour, the Duke of Northumberland. The duke lost the action, but subsequently bought out Clowes, who, taking Applegath's business, removed to a site still occupied by the firm in Duke Street, Stamford Street, Blackfriars Road. In 1832 he was chosen by the executive of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge to print, from new machines made by Applegath and Cowper, the 'Penny Magazine,' the earliest instance of successfully printing woodcuts by steam. He also printed the 'Penny Cyclopædia' and other publications of the society. The chief features in his work were accuracy, speed, and quantity. The business increased rapidly, owing to Clowes's energy and enterprise. The course of its development may be seen from particulars coUected in 1839 by Sir F. B. Head (see Quarterly Review, December number), and by Timperley (Encyclopædia, p. 920). In 1846 he was turned out of his private residence in Parliament Street, where he had lived twenty-two years, to make room for railway offices, and retired to a country house at Banstead. By his wife, who died before him, he had four sons, all of whom were brought up to the business, and four daughters. He died at Wimpole Street on 26 Jan. 1847, and was buried in Norwood cemetery.
[Information from Mr. W. C. K. Clowes and Mr. W. Clowes; Description of Messrs. Clowes & Sons' printing office, Duke Street, Stamford Street, with a memoir of the late William Clowes (privately printed, n. d.); Smiles's Men of Invention and Industry, 1884; Gent. Mag. March 1847; Sussex Express, 30 Jan. 1847; Bookseller, June 1870.]
H. R. T.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cotman, Miles Edmund

​COTMAN, MILES EDMUND (1810–1858), landscape painter, eldest son of John Sell Cotman [q. v.], was born 5 Jan. 1810. He was brought up as an artist under his father's instruction. He continued to teach his father's pupils and classes at Norwich after the latter was appointed drawing-master at King's College, London. In 1836 he was appointed assistant to his father at King's College, and in 1843 succeeded him in his appointment; but, owing to a change in the arrangements which would have required a longer attendance at the college than his health permitted, he did not hold the appointment long. In the latter part of his life he resided at North Walsham, where he continued painting and teaching till his health declined. He was admitted into the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in December 1857, suffering from disease of the ankle-joint, and died there 23 Jan. 1858.
Cotman painted river and sea views in oil and water colours, and etched a few plates, some of which were published by C. Muskett of Norwich; he also lithographed twelve facsimiles of sketches made by his father in Norfolk, which were published. His works are marked by taste and skill rather than by power or originality. He exhibited four works at the Royal Academy, ten at the British Institution, and nineteen at the Society of British Artists between 1835 and 1856.
[Information communicated by Mr. James Reeve of Norwich; Graves's Dict. of Artists.]
C. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cotes, Francis

​COTES, FRANCIS, R.A. (1725?–1770), portrait painter, born in London about 1725, was the son of Robert Cotes, an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, who had been mayor of Galway, but who, having fallen under the censure of the Irish House of Commons, left Ireland, and settled in London about 1720. Young Cotes became a pupil of George Knapton, and soon outstripped his master. He became eminent for his portraits in crayons, in which branch of art he surpassed all his predecessors, though it has been said that he owed something of his excellence to the study of the works of Rosalba. He also painted in oil colours with considerable ability, and his portraits are often good pictures, although somewhat hard and coarsely pencilled. Hogarth declared, probably not without a little malice, that Cotes was a better painter than Reynolds; but this opinion posterity has not endorsed. His crayon portraits are well drawn and have been much admired, and among them none are better than that of Queen Charlotte, with the Princess Royal asleep on her lap, belonging to the Duke of Northumberland, which was exhibited in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1867. Cotes was at one time a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, at whose exhibitions he exhibited forty-eight pictures, but he seceded from it, and was one of the artists who memorialised George III for the establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts, of which he became one of the first academicians. He enjoyed a reputation in his day, and fashion followed him from London to Bath, and back again. He was very early in life afflicted with stone, to which he fell a victim before he attained the age of forty-five, through having imprudently taken soaplees as a cure. He died 19 July 1770 at Richmond, Surrey, where he was buried. His residence, 32 Cavendish Square, London, was afterwards occupied by Romney, and then by Sir Martin Archer Shee. Among his best portraits in oil are the group of Joah Bates [q. v.] and his wife, in the possession of Mr. Henry Littleton, the full-length portrait of Admiral Lord Hawke at Greenwich Hospital, a portrait of Mary, duchess of Norfolk, at Arundel Castle, and that of his father, his diploma work, in the Royal Academy. Most of his draperies were painted by Peter Toms, R.A. Many of his portraits have been engraved by McArdell, Houston, Valentine Green, James Watson, and others. The only portrait of him which ever existed was a large miniature painted from memory by his brother, Samuel Cotes [q. v.]
[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornum, 1849, ii. 711; Edwards's Anecdotes of Painters, 1808, p. 33; Sandby's Hist. of the Royal Academy of Arts, 1862, i. 95; Redgraves' Century of Painters of the English School, 1866, i. 42; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of the English School, 1878; Seguier's Critical and Commercial Dict. of the Works of Painters, 1870.]
R. E. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cotes, Samuel

​COTES, SAMUEL (1734–1818), miniature painter, was third son of Robert Cotes, mayor of Galway, who settled in London, adopting the medical profession, and married Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Lynn, chief secretary to the Royal African Company, by whom he was the father of Francis Cotes [q. v.] and Samuel. The latter was brought up by his father to the medical profession, but was encouraged by his brother's great success as a painter to throw over medicine for the fine arts. He received instruction from his brother, who greatly assisted him; and though he never attained the eminence his brother succeeded in doing, he became deservedly and highly esteemed as a portrait painter, and was reckoned the first miniature painter of his time. His crayon portraits were also much admired. He painted in miniature both on enamel and on ivory, and exhibited from 1760 to 1789 at the exhibitions of the Incorporated Society of Artists, of which he was a fellow, and at the Royal Academy. During this time he resided at 25 Percy Street, Rathbone Place. He was devotedly attached to his brother, and after the latter's death he painted a large miniature of him from memory. Cotes retired from active life some years before his death, and then resided in Paradise Row, Chelsea, where he died 7 March 1818 in his eighty-fifth year. He was twice married, first to a Miss Creswick, and secondly to Miss Sarah Shepherd, a lady of great attainments, especially as an artist, who died 27 Sept. 1814, aged 76. A portrait by him of Mrs. Yates, as Electra, was engraved in mezzotint by Philip Dawe, and a portrait of Thomas Pownall, governor of New Jersey, was similarly engraved by Richard Earlom.
[Redgrave's Dict. of English Artists; Gent. Mag. (1814) lxxxiv. 403, (1818) lxxxviii. 276; Edwards's Anecdotes of Painting; Chaloner Smith's Catalogue of British Mezzotinto Portraits; Catalogues of the Royal Academy and the Incorporated Society of Artists.]
L. C.