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

​MATCHAM, GEORGE (1753–1833), traveller, only son of Simon Matcham, superintendent of the marine of the East India Company, and senior member in council of the presidency of Bombay, was born in 1753, and educated at Charterhouse School. Entering the civil service of the East India Company, he subsequently became their resident at Baroche. On its cession to the Mahrattas in 1783 Matcham retired from the service. He had already travelled much in the East, and now made his way to England by an overland route, much of which he had previously explored. It included Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Turkey, Greece, the Greek Islands, Hungary, and other countries. Attended only by Arabs, he rode on horseback from Bagdad to Pera; he kept journals of his travels, and an account of a journey from Aleppo to Bagdad was published with the second edition of James Capper's ‘Observations on the Passage to India,’ London, 1784, and bound up with Eyles Irwin's ‘Voyage up the Red Sea.’ During his tour he became acquainted with many persons of note, including the emperor Joseph II. In 1785 he finally settled in England, where he devoted himself to the pursuits of a country gentleman; in 1802 he patented an apparatus for preserving vessels in danger of shipwreck, and made several communications to the government on various public improvements. Some of his views are embodied in his privately printed volumes, ‘Anecdotes of a Croat’ (Gent. Mag. 1833, i. 276) and ‘Parental Chit-chat,’ 1826. He died on 3 Feb. 1833. In 1785 Matcham married Catherine, daughter of the Rev. Edmund Nelson, and sister of Admiral Lord Nelson, by whom he had five daughters and three sons.
The eldest son, George Matcham (1789–1877), born in 1789, was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated LL.B. in 1814, and LL.D. in 1820. In the same year he was admitted advocate in Doctors' Commons. He became chairman of the Wiltshire quarter sessions in 1836, and contributed accounts of the hundreds of Downton and Frustfield to Hoare's ‘Modern History of Wilts,’ London, 1825, &c. On 6 Nov. 1861 he contributed to the ‘Times’ ‘Notes on the Character of Admiral Lord Nelson,’ which were reprinted in the same year, together with ‘Observations on No. ccxxi. of the “Quarterly Review”’ (referred to in Stanhope's Life of Pitt, iv. 329 note, ed. 1862). He died on 18 Jan. 1877, leaving a son and two daughters by his wife Harriet, eldest daughter and heiress of William Eyre of Newhouse, whom he had married in 1817.
[Works in British Museum Library; Law Mag. and Review, 27 May 1877; Gent. Mag. 1833, i. 276; List of East India Company's Servants, 1782; Bengal Cal. 1788.]
A. F. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mather, Robert Cotton

​MATHER, ROBERT COTTON, LL.D. (1808–1877), missionary, son of James Mather, congregational minister, was born at New Windsor, Manchester, on 8 Nov. 1808, and educated at the Edinburgh and Glasgow universities and Homerton College. After his ordination at Lendal Chapel, York, on 1 June 1833, he went to India as an agent of the London Missionary Society. He had the pastorate of the Union Chapel, Calcutta, for a few months, then removed to Benares, where he remained until May 1838, when he settled at Mirzapore. There he established a new mission, and in course of time gathered a flourishing Christian community, built schools and churches, founded the orphan school press, and started and edited a monthly journal in Hindustani. He was an excellent preacher in the native languages of Northern India, a successful administrator of the important mission which he founded, and an influential member of various associations of missionaries in India. He revised and edited the entire Bible in Hindustani, and in recognition of this work the university of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of LL.D. in 1862. He wrote many tracts and treatises in Hindu and Urdu, and among his English writings is one on ‘Christian Missions in India,’ London, 1858. He edited Sherring's ‘Indian Church during the Great Rebellion,’ 1859. He returned to England in 1873, after forty years' work in India, and subsequently published a commentary on the New Testament in Hindustani. At the time of his death, which took place at Torrington Park, Finchley, London, on 21 April 1877, he was engaged on a commentary on the Old Testament in the same language. His wife Elizabeth, born Sewell, ‘church member of Hew Court Chapel, Carey Street, London,’ was an industrious author, and published a Hindustani dictionary of the Bible. After Mather's death she joined the female mission at Mirzapore, ​and died 29 March 1879. Their youngest son, Dr. C. B. Mather, is now medical missionary in Tanganyika, Central Africa.
[Congregational Year Book, 1878, p. 325; Athenæum, 28 April 1877; Brit. Mus. Cat.; private information.]
C. W. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mather, Nathanael

​MATHER, NATHANAEL (1631–1697), congregationalist divine, second son of Richard Mather [q. v.], was born at Much Woolton, Lancashire, on 20 March 1630–1. In 1635 his father took him to New England, where he graduated M.A. at Harvard College in 1647. He finished his studies in England, probably returning with his brother Samuel [q. v.] in 1650. He was assistant to George Mortimer at Harberton, Devonshire (a sequestered vicarage), and succeeded him there in 1655. In 1656 he was presented by the Protector to the sequestered vicarage of Barnstaple, Devonshire, in which the vicar, Martin Blake, B.D., was reinstated at the Restoration. Mather then went over to Holland, and for some years was pastor of the English Church at Rotterdam. On the death of his brother Samuel, he succeeded him (1671) as minister at New Row, Dublin. In the troubled year 1688 he left Ireland, and became pastor of the independent church in Paved Alley, Lime Street, London, vacant by the death of John Collins (1632?–1687) [q. v.] He joined ​the ‘happy union’ of 1691, but was a leader in its disruption, owing to the alleged heresies of Daniel Williams, D.D. [q. v.] On the withdrawal of William Bates, D.D. [q. v.] (who sided with Williams), from the Pinners' Hall lectureship, Mather was appointed (1694) in his place. He died on 26 July 1697, and was buried at Bunhill Fields, where a long Latin inscription was placed upon his tombstone; a still longer Latin epitaph is in Isaac Watts's ‘Lyric Poems,’ 1709, pp. 300 sq. He was of tall stature, and a dignified preacher.
He published: 1. ‘The Righteousness of God through Faith,’ &c., Oxford, 1694, 4to (his first lectures at Pinners' Hall). Posthumous were: 2. ‘The Lawfulness of a Pastor's acting in other Churches,’ &c., 1698, 12mo. 3. ‘Twenty-three select Sermons … at Pinners' Hall,’ &c., 1701, 8vo.
[Calamy's Account, 1713, p. 238; Calamy's Continuation, 1727, i. 257 sq.; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, ii. 196, 216; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1808, i. 231; Armstrong's Appendix to Martineau's Ordination Service, 1829, p. 80.]
A. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Morrison, Charles

Called "illusory" in the ODNB.
​MORRISON, CHARLES (fl. 1753), first projector of the electric telegraph, was a surgeon of Greenock. He is said to have subsequently engaged in the Glasgow tobacco trade, and to have emigrated to Virginia, where he died.
Morrison was identified by Brewster and others with the writer of a letter in the 'Scots Magazine' for 1753 (xv. 73), dated 'Renfrew, Feb. 1. 1753,' and signed with the initials 'C. M.' This letter contains a suggestion for conveying messages by means of electricity. The author proposes to set up a number of wires corresponding to the letters of the alphabet, extending from one station to the other. 'Let a ball be suspended from every wire,' says the writer, 'and about a sixth or an eighth of an inch below the balls place the letters of the alphabet, marked on bits of paper, or any other substance that may be light enough to rise to the electrified ball, and at the same time let it be so contrived that each of them may reassume its proper place when dropt.' Signals were to be conveyed by bringing the wire belonging to each letter successively into connection with the prime conductor of an electrical machine, when a current passes and electrifies the ball at the receiving end. The project was alluded to by Sir David Brewster in 1855 in the course of an article on the electric telegraph in the 'North British Review,' xxii. 545. In 1859 Brewster was informed by a Mr. Forman of Port Glasgow that, according to a letter (not now known to exist) dated 1750 addressed by Forman's grandfather to a Miss Margaret Wingate, residing at Craigengelt, near Denny, Charles Morrison had actually transmitted messages along wires by means of electricity, and he is stated to have communicated the results of his experiments to Sir Hans Sloane.
[Home Life of Sir David Brewster, 1869, p. 206; Brewster's correspondence on the subject is preserved at the Watt Monument, Greenock. Morrison's alleged letter to Sir Hans Sloane is not included in the Sloane MSS. at the British Museum, nor does Morrison's name occur in the various publications of the Historical Society of Virginia.]
R. B. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Morris, Thomas (fl.1780-1800)

​MORRIS, THOMAS (fl. 1780–1800), engraver, born about 1750, was a pupil of Woollett. He worked in the line manner, and confined himself to landscape, the figures in his plates being frequently put in by others. Morris was employed by Boydell, and, in conjunction with Gilpin and Garrard, produced some good sporting prints. His most important plates are: A landscape after G. Smith of Chichester, 1774; 'Hawking,' after Gilpin,' 1780; 'Fox Hunting,' after Gilpin and Barret (the figures by Bartolozzi), 1783; view of Skiddaw, after Loutherbourg, 1787; 'Horse, Mare, and Foals,' after Gilpin; 'Mare and Foals,' after Garrard, 1793; views of the ranger's house in Greenwich Park and Sir Gregory Turner's mansion on Blackheath, a pair, after Robertson; and views of Ludgate Street and Fish Street Hill, a pair, after Marlow, 1795. A series of Indian views, from drawings by Hodges and others, was engraved by Morris for the 'European Magazine.' He also executed a few original etchings, including two views on the Avon at ​ Bristol, 1802. This is the latest date to be found on his work.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Huberand Martini's Manuel des Curieux, &c., 1808; Dodd's manuscript Hist. of English Engravers in British Museum Add. MS. 33403.]
F. M. O'D.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Morrison, Richard (1767-1849)

Contains subarticle, his son, Morrison, William Vitruvius (1794–1838).
​MORRISON, Sir RICHARD (1767–1849), architect, born in 1767, was son of John Morrison of Middleton, co. Cork, an architect of scientific attainments. Originally intended for the church, he was eventually placed as pupil with James Gandon [q. v.] the architect, in Dublin. He obtained through his godfather, the Earl of Shannon, a post in the ordnance department at Dublin; but this he abandoned, when he entered into full practice as an architect. Having resided for some time at Clonmel, he removed about 1800 to Dublin and settled at Bray. Morrison had very extensive public and private practice in Ireland. Among his public works were alterations to the cathedral at Cashel, the court-house and gaol at Galway, court-houses at Carlow, Clonmel, Roscommon, Wexford, and elsewhere, and the Roman catholic cathedral at Dublin. He built or altered very many mansions of the nobility and gentry in Ireland, and was knighted by the lord-lieutenant, Earl de Grey, in 1841. He died at Bray on 31 Oct. 1849, and was buried in the Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin. He was president of the Institute of Architects of Ireland. In 1793 he published a volume of ‘Designs.’
Morrison, William Vitruvius (1794–1838), architect, son of the above, was born at Clonmel on 22 April 1794. In 1821 he made an extensive tour on the continent, and on his return assisted his father in many of his works. He also had a large public and private practice in Ireland. His health, however, broke down, and after a second visit to the continent he died in his father's house at Bray on 16 Oct. 1838, and was buried in the Mount Jerome cemetery. He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
[Papworth's Dict. of Architecture; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Annual Register, 1849; English Cyclopædia; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biog. p. 352.]
L. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Morris, Richard

​MORRIS or MORYS, RICHARD (d. 1779), Welsh scholar, was a brother of Lewis Morris [q. v.], and, like him, combined a love of Welsh poetry and history with much business capacity. While still young he left Anglesey for London, and there obtained a position in the navy office, where he ultimately became chief clerk of foreign accounts. After a long term of service he was superannuated, and died in the Tower in 1779. The chief service he rendered to Wales was his careful supervision of the editions of the Welsh Bible printed in 1746 and 1752. These were issued by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in answer to the appeal of Griffith Jones of Llanddowror, Carmarthenshire, for a supply of bibles for his travelling free schools. 'Rhisiart Morys' not only supervised the orthography, but added tables of Jewish weights and measures. He also issued an illustrated translation into Welsh of the Book of Common Prayer. He was a leading figure among London Welshmen, and on the establishment of the original Cymmrodorion Society in September 1751 became its president. Among other Welshmen of talent whom his position enabled him to befriend, Goronwy Owain [q. v.] received much assistance from him, being employed to translate the rules of the society into Welsh.
[Diddanwch Teuluaidd, edit. 1817; Rowlands's Cambrian Bibliography; Life of Goronwy Owain, by Rev. Robert Jones, 1876.]
J. E. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Morris, Thomas (1660-1748)

​MORRIS, THOMAS (1660–1748), non-juror, born in 1660, may possibly be the Thomas Morris who graduated from King's College, Cambridge, B.A. in 1683, M.A. in 1688; in the latter year he was minor canon of Worcester and vicar of Claines, Worcestershire. Refusing to take the oath of supremacy in 1689, he was deprived of his ecclesiastical preferments, and reduced to live on the generosity of affluent Jacobites; he is nevertheless described as 'very charitable to the poor, and much esteem'd.' He died on 15 June 1748, aged 88, and was buried at the west end of the north aisle of the cloisters of Worcester Cathedral under a flat gravestone, on which was inscribed, at his request, the word, 'Miserimus,' without name, date, or comment. This inscription was nearly obliterated in 1829, but was soon after renewed with the more correct spelling, 'Miserrimus.'
In 1828 Wordsworth wrote in the 'Keepsake' a sonnet on 'Miserrimus,' apparently without any knowledge of Morris's history. It begins '"Miserrimus!" and neither name nor date.' Another sonnet, with the same title, by Edwin Lees, was published in 1828, and a third, by Henry Martin, was included in his 'Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems,' Birmingham, 1830, 8vo. In 1832 Frederic Mansell Reynolds [q. v.] published a novel, 'Miserrimus,' which reached a second edition in the next year, and was dedicated to William Godwin. In the advertisement to the second edition Reynolds says he 'would never have adopted this epitaph as the groundwork for a fiction had he been aware that the name and career of the individual who selected it were known.' The 'Gentleman's Magazine' (1833, i. 245) calls it 'a posthumous libel on an innocent and helpless person whose story is widely different from that here inflicted on his memory.'
[Gent. Mag. 1748, p. 428, s.v. ‘Maurice;’ The Worcestershire Miscellany, p. 140, Suppl. pp. 37–40; Bowles's Life of Ken, ii. 181; Green's Hist. and Antiquities of Worcester, App. p. xxvii; Mackenzie Walcott's Memorials, p. 28; Britton's Hist. and Antiquities of Worcester Cathedral, pp. 23–4; Chambers's Biog. Illustr. of Worcestershire, pp. 310–11; Rep. of Brit. Archæol. Assoc. at Worcester, August 1848, p. 130; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. v. 354, 5th ser. xi. 348, 392–3 (by Cuthbert Bede), 432; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
A. F. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dow, Alexander

​DOW, ALEXANDER (d. 1779), historian and dramatist, a native of Crieff, Perthshire, was educated for a mercantile career. He is said to have quitted Scotland owing to a fatal duel, and to have worked his way as a common sailor to Bencoolen. There he became secretary to the governor, and was most strongly recommended to the patronage of the officials of the East India Company at Calcutta. He joined the army there as an ensign in the Bengal infantry on 14 Sept. 1760, and was rapidly promoted lieutenant on 23 Aug. 1763, and captain on 16 April 1764. He returned to England on leave in 1768, and published in that year two translations, ‘Tales translated from the Persian of Inatulla of Delhi’ and the ‘History of Hindostan, translated from the Persian of Ferishta.’ Both works had a great success, and in the following year Dow made his début as a dramatist with a tragedy entitled ‘Zingis,’ in five acts, which was acted with some success at Drury Lane. He then returned to India, and was promoted lieutenant-colonel on 25 Feb. 1769, and in 1772 published the continuation of his history of Hindostan to the death of Aurungzebe, with two dissertations, ‘On the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan,’ and ‘An Enquiry into the State of Bengal.’ In 1774 he again returned to England, and Garrick produced his second tragedy in verse at Drury Lane, entitled ‘Sethona.’ It was acted only for nine nights, and is said by Baker, in his ‘Biographia Dramatica,’ to be not really by Dow at all, but only to bear his name; for ‘he is said by those who knew him well to be utterly un​qualified for the production of learning or of fancy, either in prose or verse.’ Dow returned once more to India, and died at Bhágalpur on 31 July 1779.
H. M. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dover, John

​DOVER, JOHN (d. 1725), dramatist, was the son and heir of John Dover of Barton-on-the-Heath, Warwickshire, and grandson of Captain Robert Dover [q. v.] It is said, on the authority of his daughter, Mrs. Cordwell, that he was born after his mother had passed the sixty-first year of her age. In 1661 he was admitted demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, matriculated on 12 July in the same year, but left the university in 1665 without a degree. He entered ​Gray's Inn on 19 May 1664, was called to the bar on 21 June 1672 (ib.), and, according to Wood, ‘lived at Banbury in Oxfordshire, and practised his faculty’ (Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 597). Becoming tired of the law, he took orders about 1684, and four years later obtained the rectory of Drayton, near Banbury, ‘where,’ writes Wood, ‘he is resorted to by fanatical people’ (loc. cit.) Dover died at Drayton on 3 Nov. 1725, aged 81, and was buried on the 6th of that month in the chancel of the church (mon. inscr. in Bloxam, Reg. of Magd. Coll. Oxford, v. 240). He is author of ‘The Roman Generalls, or the Distressed Ladies,’ 4to, London, 1667 (another edition, 1677), an unacted tragedy in heroic verse, and written, he declares in dedicating it to Robert, lord Brook, to mitigate the severity of his legal studies, ‘for after I had read a sect or two in Littleton, I then to divert my self took Cæsar's Commentaries, or read the Lives of my Roman Generalls out of Plutarch.’ Wood, who states that Dover had ‘written one or two more plays, which are not yet printed,’ mentions another piece from his pen, ‘The White Rose, or a Word for the House of York, vindicating the Right of Succession; in a Letter from Scotland, 9 March 1679,’ fol., London, 1680.
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Groenveldt, John

​GROENVELDT, JOHN, M.D. (1647?–1710?), physician, born about 1647, was a native of Deventer in Holland. He was educated partly in Holland and then under F. Zypæus at Louvain, and in Paris. On 13 Sept. 1667 he was entered as a medical student at Leyden, but graduated M.D. at Utrecht on 18 March 1670. His thesis, 'De Calculo Vesicæ' (Utrecht, 1670), was translated into English and published in London in 1677, and with large additions in 1710. About 1673 he was appointed physician in chief to the garrison at Grave. Ten years afterwards he came to England, settled in Throgmorton Street, London, and was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 2 April 1683. Supported by powerful patronage he passed as a specialist on gout and stone, but was regarded by most of his brethren as a quack. In 1693 he was summoned before the college for mala praxis in the internal use of cantharides, but was not punished. In April 1697 he was again summoned for the same offence, and was fined and committed to Newgate, but was soon released (Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation, iv. 214). A female patient, to whom he is said to have administered thirty-six grains of the medicine, brought an action against him on the following 7 Dec., but though nearly twenty members of the college appeared on her behalf, a verdict was given in his favour (ib. iv. 316). He in turn sued the college for wrongful imprisonment, but the court gave judgment for the defendants on 8 June 1700 (ib. iv. 654). Groenveldt, or Greenfield, as he sometimes styled himself in England, was the author of a small treatise on his favourite medicine, entitled 'Tutus Cantharidum in medicina Usus internus,' 1698 (2nd edition, 1703), which was translated into English, with additions, by John Marten, surgeon, in 1706. He wrote also:
* ‘Dissertatio Lithologica,’ 1684; 2nd edition, 1687.
* ‘Practica Medica,’ 1688.
* ‘Arthritology; or a Discourse of the Gout,’ 1691.
* ‘Fundamenta Medicinse scriptoribus … præstantioribus deprompta’ [anon.], 1714; 2nd edition, with author's name (1715). This handbook, compiled by Groenveldt from the dictation of Zypæus, was published in English in 1715 and 1753.
In May 1710 Groenveldt was living opposite the Sun Tavern, Threadneedle Street, but died apparently in the same year.
[Prefaces and Appendices to Marten's translation of Groenveldt's Tutus Cantharidum Usus, 1706; Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, i. 429-30; Lists of Coll. of Phys.]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Grogan, Nathaniel

​GROGAN, NATHANIEL (d. 1807?), painter, a native of Cork, served first as an apprentice to a wood-turner, but becoming acquainted with John Butts, the painter, at Cork, desired to become a painter. He entered the army, however, and served through the American war, at the close of which he returned to Cork to devote himself to art. He was mainly occupied in painting landscapes, but gained his chief successes in humorous subjects, especially drawn from Irish peasant life. In 1782 he sent four pictures to the exhibition of the Free Society of Artists in London. Some pictures by him were exhibited at the Irish Exhibition in London, 1888. Grogan also worked in aquatint, and executed in this method a large plate of 'The Country Schoolmaster' (an impression is in the print room at the British Museum), and some views in the neighbourhood of Cork. ​He died at Cork about 1807 in poor circumstances, leaving two sons, also practicing as artists.
[Pasquin's Artists of Ireland; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists.]
L. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Groombridge, William

​GROOMBRIDGE, WILLIAM (fl. 1770–1790), water-colour painter, first appears as an exhibitor of landscapes at the Royal Academy in 1770, and continued to exhibit up to 1790. His pictures were tinted drawings, and the smaller ones were neatly finished and well thought of. He was less successful in larger compositions. About 1780 he removed from London to Canterbury. He exhibited for the last time in 1790. He published a volume of 'Sonnets,' London, 1789. He is included in the 'Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors,' published in 1816.
L. C.