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

​GRIFFIN (formerly Whitwell), JOHN GRIFFIN, Lord Howard de Walden (1719–1797), field-marshal, born 13 March 1719 at Oundle in Northamptonshire, was the eldest son of William Whitwell of that place and his wife Ann, youngest sister of Lord Griffin of Braybrooke and grand-daughter of James Howard, third earl of Suffolk and baron Howard de Walden. He entered the army, became captain in the 3rd regiment of foot-guards in March 1744, and served with the allied forces in the Netharlands and Germany during the war of the Austrian succession and the seven years' war. In this service he distinguished himself, and succeeded to the command of the 33rd regiment, stationed in Germany. He was promoted major-general on 25 June 1759, lieutenant-general on 19 Jan. 1761, general on 2 April 1778, and field-marshal on 30 July 1796. As a reward for his military services he was made a knight of the Bath, and installed in Henry VII's Chapel on 26 May 1761.
In 1749 he assumed by act of parliament the surname and arms of Griffin, on receiving from his aunt Elizabeth, wife of the first Earl of Portsmouth, her share in the estate of Saffron Walden in Essex. On the death of the same aunt he also inherited Audley House with its demeenes. On 26 Nov. 1749 he was elected member of parliament for Andover Vice Viscount Lymington, deceased, and continued to represent the constituency till 1784, when he succeeded to the House of Lords as Baron Howard de Walden, his claim to the barony as representative of the last lord having been allowed by a committee of the house on 8 Aug. 1784.
He married, (1) on 9 Feb. 1749, Anne Mary (d. 18 Aug. 1764), daughter of John, baron Schutz, and, (2) on 11 June 1765, Catherine, daughter of William Clayton, esq., of Harleyford in Buckinghamshire. He was created in 1788 Baron Braybrooke of Braybrooke in Northamptonshire, with special remainder in his kinsman Richard Aldworth Neville. He died on 2 June 1797 without issue, when the barony of Howard de Walden again fell for a time into abeyance. At the time of his death he was lord-lieutenant (chosen in 1784) and vice-admiral of the county of Essex, colonel of the Queen's Own dragoons, and recorder of Saffron Walden.
[Gent. Mag. 1797. pt. i. p. 529; Haydn's Book of Dignities; London Gazette; Proceedings in relation to the Barony of Walden, published 1807.]
E. J. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Grieve, James

​GRIEVE, JAMES, M.D. (d. 1773), translator of ‘Celsus,’ was educated at Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.D. 31 April 1752. He was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians 30 Sept. 1762. In 1764 he was appointed physician to St. Thomas's Hospital, and in the following year to the Charterhouse. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society 2 March 1769, and became a fellow of the College of Physicians ‘speciali gratia’ 30 Sept. 1771. He died 9 July 1773 at his official residence in Charterhouse Square. He is described by Dr. Lettsom [q. v.], who was his pupil, as an amiable man and unassuming scholar. In 1756 he published ‘A. Cornelius Celsus of Medicine in eight books, translated, with Notes Critical and Explanatory, by James Grieve, M.D.’ A third edition of this translation, which is a painstaking and excellent piece of work, was published in 1837, ‘carefully revised with additional notes by George Futvoye.’ According to Watt he was the translator of Stephen Krasheninnikov's ‘History of Kamschatka,’ published at London 1763, Gloucester 1764, and afterwards at St. Petersburg.
A. V.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Grieve, William

​GRIEVE, WILLIAM (1800–1844), scene-painter, one of a family connected for several generations with this branch of art, son of John Henderson Grieve, a scene-painter of repute, was born in London in 1800. He was employed as a boy at Covent Garden Theatre, but subsequently gained his chief celebrity as a scene-painter for Drury Lane Theatre and Her Majesty's opera-house. When Clarkson Stanfield and David Roberts abandoned scene-painting, Grieve was left at the head of the profession. His moonlight scenes were especially notable, and in 1832, after a performance of ‘Robert le Diable,’ the audience called him before the curtain, then an unprecedented occurrence. Grieve also attained some success in small pictures and water-colours. He died at South Lambeth on 12 Nov. 1844, leaving a wife and five children. His younger brother, Thomas Grieve [q. v.], was also a scene-painter.
L. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Grieve, Thomas

​GRIEVE, THOMAS (1799–1882), scene-painter, son of John Henderson Grieve, theatrical scene-painter (1770-1845), was born at Lambeth, London, 11 June 1799, and was a member of a family long associated with Covent Garden as the chief artists employed in the adornment of the dramas, spectacles, and pantomimes brought out under the management of the Kembles and Laporte. When Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews became lessees of Covent Garden Theatre in 1839, Thomas Grieve was chosen as the principal scenic artist, and he painted the effective panoramas introduced into their Christmas pantomimes. His services were afterwards transferred to Drury Lane, and in December 1862 he was the artist who pictorially illustrated the famous annual of ‘Goody Two Shoes.’ The diorama of ‘The Overland Mail’ at the Gallery of Illustration, 14 Regent Street, in 1850, and many illustrations of a similar kind were much indebted for their success to his artistic aid. In conjunction with W. Telbin and John Absolon he produced the panorama of the Campaigns of Wellington in 1852, and subsequently other panoramas of the Ocean Mail, the Crimean War, and the Arctic Regions. In partnership with his son, Thomas Walford Grieve, he continued to labour for many years, and the announcement that the scenery for any piece was by Grieve and Son was a sufficient guarantee to the public of the excellence of the work. In the brilliancy of his style, the appearance of reality, and the artistic beauty of his landscape compositions, he has seldom been excelled. He worked on till his death at 1 Palace Road, Lambeth (since known as 47 Lambeth Palace Road), 16 April 1882. He was buried in Norwood cemetery on 20 April. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Goatley of Newbury, by whom he had two children, Thomas Walford Grieve, born 15 Oct. 1841, a well-known scene-painter, and Fanny Elizabeth Grieve, who married P. Hicks of Ramsgate. He was a brother of William Grieve [q. v.]
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Brandreth, Joseph

​BRANDRETH, JOSEPH, M.D. (1746–1815), physician, was born at Ormskirk, Lancashire, in 1746. After graduating M.D. at Edinburgh in 1770, where his thesis, 'De Febribus intermittentibus,' was published, he exercised his profession in his native town until about 1776, when he succeeded to the practice of Dr. Matthew Dobson, at Liverpool, on the retirement of that gentleman to Bath. He remained at Liverpool for the remainder of his life, and became an eminently successful and popular practitioner. He was a man of wide and various reading, and possessed a most accurate and tenacious memory, which he attributed to his habit of depending on it without referring to notes. He established the Dispensary at Liverpool in 1778, and for thirty years gave great attention to the Infirmary. The discovery of the utility of applying cold in fever is ascribed to him. This remedy he described in a paper 'On the Advantages arising from the Topical Application of Cold Water and Vinegar in Typhus, and on the Use of Large Doses of Opium in certain Cases' (Med. Commentaries, xvi. p. 382, 1791). He died at Liverpool, 10 April 1815.
[Monthly Repository, 1815, p. 254; Gent. Mag. lxxxv. pt. i. 472 (taken from Liverpool Mercury, 14 April 1815); Picton's Memorials of Liverpool, 2nd ed. 1875, pp. 133, 147, 355; Evans's Cat. of Portraits, ii. 49; Watt's Bibl. Brit.]
C. W. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Brandt, Francis Frederick

​BRANDT, FRANCIS FREDERICK (1819–1874), barrister and author, eldest son of the Rev. Francis Brandt, rector of Aidford, Cheshire, 1843-50, who died 1870, by Ellinor, second daughter of Nicholas Grimshaw of Preston, Lancashire, was born at Gawsworth Rectory, Cheshire, in 1819. He was educated at the Macclesfield grammar school, entered at the Inner Temple in 1839, and practised for some years as a special pleader. Called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 30 April 1847, he took the North Wales and Chester circuit. He was a successful and popular leader of the Chester and Knutsford sessions, had a fair business in London, especially as an arbitrator or referee, was one of the revising barristers on his circuit, and was employed for many years as a reporter for the 'Times' in the common pleas. About 1864 he was offered and declined an Indian judgeship. In his earlier days he was a writer in magazines and in 'Bell's Life.' The first of his books appeared in 1857, and was entitled 'Habet! a Short Treatise on the Law of the Land as it affects Pugilism,' in which he attempted to show that prize-fighting was not of itself illegal. His next work was a novel called 'Frank Morland's Manuscripts, or Memoirs of a Modern Templar,' 1859, which was followed by 'Fur and Feathers, the Law of the Land relating to Game, &c.,' 1859, 'Suggestions for the Amendment of the Game Laws,' 1862, and 'Games, Gaming, and Gamesters' Law,' 1871, a book of considerable legal and antiquarian research, which reached a second edition. He died at his chambers, 8 Figtree Court, Temple, London, on Sunday, 6 Dec. 1874, having suffered much from a neuralgic complaint, and was buried at Christ Church, Todmorden. He was a zealous and efficient member of the Inns of Court Rifle Corps. Brandt was never married.
[Law Times (1874), lviii. 125.]
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Branston, Allen Robert

​BRANSTON, ALLEN ROBERT (1778–1827), wood-engraver, the son of a general copper-plate engraver and heraldic painter, was born at Lynn in Norfolk in 1778. He was apprenticed to his father, and when in his nineteenth year settled at Bath, where he practised both as a painter and engraver. He came to London in 1799, and after a while devoted himself to wood-engraving, in which branch of the art of engraving he was self-taught. He was employed chiefly in book-illustration, after the designs of Thurston and ​others. He soon became the head of his profession in London, where nothing equal to Bewick and his pupils had been produced before his arrival. With Bewick he was always in hopeless rivalry, yet, though he was no designer and some twenty-three years the junior of the Newcastle master, he may claim to be the founder of the 'London school' of wood-engraving, and to some extent to share with Bewick the credit of raising the character of his art in England. He specially excelled in engraving figures and interiors, but was less successful in outdoor scenes. The 'Cave of Despair,' after Thurston, in Savage's 'Practical Hints on Decorative Printing,' 1822, is generally considered his best plate, and shows his skill both in 'white' and 'black' line. Amongst the works illustrated in whole or in part by him were 'The History of England' published by Wallis and Scholey, 1804-10; Bloomfield's 'Wild Flowers,' 1806; and poems by George Marshall, 1812. He had many pupils, the most celebrated of whom was John Thompson. The work of Branston and Thompson can be compared in the illustrations to Puckle's 'Club,' 1817. Branston projected a volume of fables in rivalry with those of Bewick after designs by Thurston, but after a few of them were cut he abandoned the enterprise. He also engraved a few cuts of birds to show his superiority to the Newcastle engraver; but though beautifully cut, they were essentially inferior to Bewick's. Branston died at Brompton in 1827. He is generally called Robert Branston.
[Redgrave's Dict' of Artists, 1878; Bryan's Dict. (Graves); Chatto's Treatise on Wood-engraving; Linton's Wood-engraving; Lang and Dobson's The Library.]
C. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Branwhite, Charles

​BRANWHITE, CHARLES (1817–1880), landscape painter, son of Nathan Branwhite [q.v.], was born at Bristol in 1817, and there studied art under his father, beginning as a sculptor. His association and friendship, however, with William John Muller, also a native of Bristol, induced him to give his undivided attention to water-colour painting, and his pictures, from the year 1849, formed no small attraction in the gallery in Pall Mall East. He adopted this change of art notwithstanding the fact that he had gained silver medals for bas-reliefs in 1837 and 1838 at the Society of Arts. His style of painting shows much of Muller's influence. Some of his most striking landscapes represent frost scenes. Among his works are: 'Post Haste,' 'April Showers on the Eastern Coast,' 'An old Lime-kiln,' 'Kilgarren Castle,' 'Winter Sunset,' 'Old Salmon Trap on the Conway,' 'The Environs of an Ancient Garden,' 1852, 'A Frozen Ferry,' 1853 (this and the previous picture received prizes from the Glasgow Art Union), 'Ferry on the Thames' (at the London International Exhibition, 1862), 'A Black Frost.' 'Snow Storm, North Wales,' 'Salmon Poaching,' 'On the River Dee, North Wales.'
[Art Journal (N.S.), xix. 208; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers (ed. Graves), 178.]
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Brandwood, James

[Letters and Extracts of Letters of the late James Brandwood (a minister of the Society of Friends), of Westhoughton, formerly of Edgworth, Manchester, 1828; Scholes's Biographical Sketch of James Brandwood, Manchester, 1882; Smith's Catalogue of Friends' Books, London, 1867.]
W. E. A. A.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Brandreth, Jeremiah

​BRANDRETH, JEREMIAH, otherwise styled Jeremiah Coker (d. 1817), leader of an attempted rising against the government in the midland counties, was, according to three several accounts, a native of Ireland, of Exeter, and the most probable of Wilford, Nottingham, but nothing is known regarding his parentage and very little regarding his ​early life. For some time he was in the army, but shortly before the attempted rising he lived with his wife and three children at Sutton-in-Ashfield, where he was occupied as a framework knitter. His striking personal appearance and his daring and reckless energy seem to have exercised an extraordinary influence over his associates, by whom he was known merely as the 'Nottingham Captain.' In reality he was the tool and dupe of a person of the name of Oliver, who encouraged him to undertake his quixotic enterprise, by asserting that he was acting in concert with others, who were fomenting a general insurrection thoughout England. Acting on the instructions and assurances of Oliver, Brandreth, on 9 June 1817, assembled about fifty associates, collected from adjoining districts, in Wingfield Park. Having made a number of calls at farmhouses for guns, in the course of which they shot a farm-servant dead, the insurgents were proceeding on their march towards Nottingham, which they supposed was already in the hands of their friends, when they were suddenly confronted by a company of hussars. Brandreth attempted to rally his straggling followers to meet the threatened attack of the cavalry, but they at once threw down their arms and fled in all directions. Brandreth remained in concealment till 50l. was offered for his capture, upon which a friend betrayed him to the government. He was tried by a special commission at Derby in October following, and along with two of his associates was executed at Nuns Green, Derby, 7 Nov. He is said to have been about twenty-five years of age. He refused to make any confession or to give any particulars regarding his past life.
[Sutton's Nottingham Date Book, pp. 335-42 Bailey's Annals of Nottingham, iii. 292-9; Howell's State Trials (1817), xxxii. 755-955; Trial of Jeremiah Brandreth for High Treason, 1817; Hunt's Green Bag Plot, 1819; Gent. Mag. lxxxvii. pt. ii. 358-60, 459-62.]
T. F. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Branker, Thomas

​BRANKER, THOMAS. [See Brancker.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Branthwaite, William

​BRANTHWAITE, WILLIAM, D.D. (d. 1620), translator of the Bible, was a member of an ancient family possessed of some property in the county of Norfolk, and one branch of which was settled at Hethel, near Wymondham. He was entered at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1578, and there took his B.A. degree in 1582. Two years afterwards, in 1584, he was admitted a fellow of Emmanuel College, which had been founded in the earlier part of that year. He proceeded to .the usual degrees M.A. in 1586, B.D. in 1593, and D.D. in 1598 and in 1607 was elected master of Gonville and Caius College. In 1607-11 he was on one of the two Cambridge committees appointed by James I to revise the translation of the Bible; the part of the work which fell to his committee being the Apocrypha, for which he was especially fitted by an extensive knowledge of Hebrew. He died during his vice-chancellorship in February 1619-20, leaving his books and considerable property to Caius College. There is a portrait of him in the Lodge of Caius, and in the gallery of Emmanuel College, to which foundation also he was a benefactor.
[Documents relating to the University and Colleges of Cambridge, ii. 389; Fuller's History of Cambridge, p. 226; Westcott's History of the English Bible, p. 116; references to property, church preferments, &c., held by various members of the family will be found in Blomefield's Norfolk.]
E. S. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dunlop, John (1755-1820)

​DUNLOP, JOHN (1755–1820), song-writer, born November 1755, was the youngest son of Provost Colin Dunlop of Carmyle in the parish of Old Monkland, Lanarkshire. He began life as a merchant, and was lord provost of Glasgow in 1796. He lived at Rosebank, near Glasgow, a property which he planted and beautified. Early in the eighteenth century it came into the possession of Provost Murdoch, and through his daughter, Margaret, it fell to her son-in-law, John Dunlop. He was appointed collector of customs at Borrowstounness, whence he was afterwards removed to Port Glasgow. An active-minded man, he is described as ‘a merchant, a sportsman, a mayor, a collector, squire, captain and poet, politician and factor.’ His humour and social qualities made him sought after. He sang well and wrote songs, some of which show a graceful lyrical faculty and are still popular. ‘Oh dinna ask me gin I lo'e ye’ is perhaps the best known, and with ‘Here's to the year that's awa’ is often included in collections of Scottish poetry. These and two others by him are in the ‘Modern Scottish Minstrel’ (1857, v. 77–81) of Dr. C. Rogers. Dunlop was also known as a writer of monumental and other inscriptions. He was a leading member of the convivial Hodge Podge Club in Glasgow, for which some of his verses were composed (J. Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs, 2nd edit. 1857, pp. 43–6, 50, 53). In figure he was a ‘hogshead,’ but ‘as jolly a cask as ere loaded the ground.’ In 1818 he edited for a son of Sir James and Lady Frances Steuart some letters to them from Lady Mary W. Montagu, since reprinted by Lord Wharncliffe. He printed for private circulation a couple of volumes of his occasional pieces, and his son, John Colin Dunlop [q. v.], the author of the ‘History of Fiction,’ edited a volume of his poems in 1836. According to the statement of the Rev. Charles Rogers, four volumes of poetry in manuscript are in existence (Notes and Queries, 5th ser. iv. 435). He died at Port Glasgow 4 Sept. 1820, aged 65 (Scots Magazine, October 1820, p. 383).
His works are: 1. ‘Poems on several Occasions,’ Greenock, 1817–19, 2 vols. 8vo (only ten copies, privately printed; one is in the Abbotsford Library). 2. ‘Original Letters from the Right Hon. Lady Mary W. Montagu to Sir James and Lady Frances Steuart, and Memoirs and Anecdotes of those distinguished Persons,’ 12mo, Greenock, 1818 (privately printed). 3. ‘Poems on several Occasions from 1793 to 1816,’ 8vo, Edinburgh, 1836 (only fifty copies privately printed by J. Colin Dunlop). Not one of these three works is in the British Museum.
[G. Stewart's Curiosities of Glasgow Citizenship, 1881, pp. 201–2; Martin's Catalogue of Privately Printed Books, 2nd edition, 1854, pp. 232, 243, 463; Coltness Collections (Maitland Club), 1842, pp. xxi, 310, 383, 388; Letters to Lady Steuart and G. Chalmers, November 1804, in British Museum, Addit. MS. 22901, ff. 205, 211.]
H. R. T.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dunkin, William

​DUNKIN, WILLIAM, D.D. (1709?–1765), poet, was left in early life to the charge of Trinity College, Dublin, by an aunt who bequeathed her property to the college with the condition that it should provide for his education and advancement in life. He took his B.A. degree in 1729, D.D. in 1744. As a young man he had a reputation for foolish acts and clever poems. One of these poems, ‘Bettesworth's Exultation,’ written in 1733, may be found among Swift's poems. Some time after this Dunkin was introduced to Swift, who became at once a very valuable patron to him. His ordination by the Archbishop of Cashel in 1735 and the increase of the annuity which he received from Trinity College from 70l. to 100l. in 1736 were both due to Swift's intercession, which caused his marriage and other imprudent acts to be overlooked. In 1739 Swift made a strenuous attempt to procure the living of Coleraine for him, but in this he was not successful. At that time Dunkin was keeping a school at Dublin, and in August 1746 Chesterfield, with whom he had some intimacy, appointed him to the mastership of Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, which he held till his death on 24 Nov. 1765. Swift speaks of him as ‘a gentleman of much wit and the best English as well as Latin poet in this kingdom’ (Letter to Ald. Barber, 17 Jan. 1737–8). Deane Swift, writing of the ‘Vindication of the Libel,’ a poem attributed to Jonathan Swift, says ‘that poem was, I know, written by my very worthy friend Dr. Dunkin, with whom I have spent many a jovial evening; he was a man of genuine true wit and a delightful companion’ (Nichols, Illustr. v. 384). Besides the two poems already mentioned Dunkin wrote: ‘Techrethyrambeia sive poëma in P. Murphorum Trin. Coll. subjanitorem,’ Dublin, 1730; a translation of ‘Techrethyrambeia,’ Dublin, 1730 (also published as an appendix to Delany's ‘Tribune,’ 1730); ‘Carbery Rocks’ (the English version of ‘Carberiæ Rupes’), published among Swift's poems; ‘The Lover's Web,’ Dublin, 1734; ‘Epistola ad Franciscum Bindonem arm., cui adjiciuntur quatuor Odæ,’ Dublin, 1741; ‘Hymen's Triumph,’ a poem in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for 1743 (xiii. 268); a prologue at the opening of a Dublin hospital, in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for 1745 (xv. 269); ‘Bœotia, a poem,’ Dublin, 1747; ‘The Bramin, an eclogue to Edm. Nugent, esq.,’ London, 1751 (Nugent was apparently an old pupil); ‘An Ode on the death of Frederick, P. of Wales, with remarks by P. H. M. D.,’ Dublin, 1752; ‘An Epistle to the Rt. Hon. Philip, Earl of Chesterfield,’ Dublin, 1760; ‘The Poet's Prayer,’ a poem in the ‘Annual Register’ for 1774 (vol. xvii. pt. ii. p. 223); ‘Select Poetical Works,’ Dublin, 1769–70; ‘Poetical Works,’ to which are added his ‘Epistles to the Earl of Chesterfield,’ Dublin, 1774, 2 vols.
[Swift's Correspondence and the notes thereto in Scott's edition; Dublin University Catalogue of Graduates; manuscript records at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen; deaths in Gent. Mag. for December 1765 (xxxv. 590); Brit. Mus. Cat. of Printed Books; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. i. 427.]
E. C-n.