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

​EDMONDSON, HENRY (1607?–1659), schoolmaster, born in Cumberland about 1607, entered Queen's College, Oxford, 10 May 1622, aged 15. ‘After he had undergone the servile places of a poor child and tabarder’ ​he proceeded B.A. 31 June 1626 and M.A. 30 June 1630, and was elected fellow of his college. He became usher of Tunbridge school, Kent, under Dr. Nicholas Grey, and in 1655, on the death of Thomas Widdowes, was appointed by his college master of the endowed free school of Northleach, Gloucestershire, where he remained till his death. He was buried in the church there on 15 July 1659, leaving behind him the reputation of a highly efficient schoolmaster. His works, all on educational topics, were: 1. ‘Lingua Linguarum. The natural language of languages, wherein it is desired and endeavoured that tongues may be brought to teach themselves and words may be best fancied, understood, and remembered,’ London, 1655. 2. ‘Homonyma et Synonyma Linguæ Latinæ conjuncta & disjuncta,’ Oxford, 1661. There is also a work by Edmondson in manuscript at the Bodleian (Rawl. MS. in Bibl. Bodl. Misc. p. 226) entitled ‘Incruenta Contentio sive Bellum Rationale,’ dedicated to Sir Henry Worsley, bart., and dated 1 Jan. 1646–7. It is ‘a collection of arguments pro and con divided into seven parts, viz. Academia, Aula, Campus Martius, Respublica, Domus Exterior, Domus Interior, and Domus Superior.’
S. L. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Edlin, Richard

​EDLIN or EDLYN, RICHARD (1631–1677), astrologer, born 29 Sept. 1631 (Sloane MS. 1120, f. 2), was practising in June 1659 what he terms his ‘noble science’ in ‘New Buildings in Sugar Loaf Court at the lower end of Tenter Alley nere little More-fields,’ but by 1664 had removed to a less retired ‘study next door above the four Swans in Bishopsgate Street.’ From the style of his writings he appears to have been a more than ordinarily illiterate knave. He published:
* ‘Observationes Astrologicæ, or An Astrologicall Discourse of the Effects of that notable conjunction of Saturn and Mars that happened October 11, 1658, and other Configurations concomitant. … To which is prefixed a brief Institution for the better understanding the following Discourse, or any other of the like nature; and also added, a most ingenious Discourse of the true Systeme of the World,’ 2 pts., 8vo, London [1659] (with a new title-page, 8vo, London, 1668).
* ‘Præ-Nuncius Sydereus: An Astrological Treatise of the Effects of the Great Conjunction of the two Superior Planets, Saturn & Jupiter, October the Xth 1663, and other Configurations concomitant. Wherein the Fate of Europe for these next twenty years is … conjectured,’ &c., 4to, London, 1664.
Unfortunately, by reason of ‘those enormities’ the author had been ‘so abundantly subject to,’ many of the events foretold had happened before the book came forth, ‘but not before it was penn'd,’ declares Edlin, ‘as divers of my friends do very well know.’ He omits all mention of his own fate, apparently through modesty; he died 19 Feb. 1676–7.
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Boyd, James

​BOYD, JAMES, LL.D. (1795–1856), schoolmaster and author, the son of a glover, was born at Paisley on 24 Dec. 1795. After receiving his early education partly in Paisley and partly in Glasgow, he entered Glasgow University, where he gained some of the highest honours in the humanity, Greek, and philosophical classes. After taking his degrees of B.A. and M.A., he devoted himself for two years to the study of medicine, but abandoned this pursuit; entered the divinity hall of the university of Glasgow, and was licensed to preach the gospel by the presbytery of Dumbarton in May 1822. Towards the close of that year he removed to Edinburgh, where for three years he maintained himself by private tuition. In 1825 he was unanimously chosen house governor in George Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh. The university of Glasgow conferred on him the honorary degree of doctor of laws.
Boyd became classical master in the high school of Edinburgh 19 Aug. 1829. The largely attended classes which he always had decisively proved the public estimate of his merits. For many years before his death he held the office of secretary to the Edinburgh Society of Teachers. He died at his house, George Square, Edinburgh, on 18 Aug. 1856, having nearly completed an incumbency of twenty-seven years in the high school. He was interred at New Calton, Edinburgh, on 21 Aug. The affectionate respect which all his pupils entertained towards Boyd is evinced by the number of clubs formed in his honour by his classes. In the Crimea, during the Russian war, two 'Boyd clubs' were formed by British officers in acknowledgment of their common relation to him as their preceptor. Within two months after his death a medal, to be named the Boyd medal, and to be annually presented to the 'dux' of the class in the high school taught by Boyd's successor, was subscribed for at a meeting held in Edinburgh by his friends and pupils. He married on 24 Dec. 1829 Jane Reid, eldest daughter of John Easton, merchant, Edinburgh, by whom he was the father of nine children.
Boyd's literary talents were confined to the editing of classical and other school books. They include: 'Roman Antiquities,' by A. Adams, 1834, which was reprinted fifteen times during the editor's lifetime; 'Q. Horatii Flacci Poemata,' by C. Anthon, 1835, which passed through three editions; 'Archæologia Græca,' by J. Potter, Bishop of Oxford, 1837; 'Sallustii Opera,' by C. Anthon, 1839; 'Select Orations of Cicero,' by C. Anthon, 1842; 'A Greek Reader,' by C. Anthon, 1844; 'A Summary of the Principal Evidences of the Christian Religion,' by B. Porteus, Bishop of London, 1850; and 'The First Greek Reader,' by Frederic Jacobs, 1851.
[Colston's History of Dr. Boyd's Fourth High School Class, with biographical sketch of Dr. Boyd, 1873; Dalgleish's Memorials of the High School of Edinburgh (1857), pp. 31, 46-7, with portrait.]
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Boyd, Mark (1805?-1879)

​BOYD, MARK (1805?–1879), author, born in Surrey near the Thames, was the younger son of Edward Boyd of Merton Hall, Newton Stuart, Wigtonshire, a merchant and brother of Benjamin Boyd [q. v.] He mainly spent his childhood on the Scotch estate, which was near the river Cree. He afterwards pursued in London an active ​business career, and became London director of a Scotch insurance society, and a lively promoter of the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand, and of other useful public undertakings. He travelled much in Europe. He published an account in the 'London and Shetland Journal' of a journey in the Orkney Isles in 1839. On 23 Dec. 1848 he married Emma Anne, the widow of 'Romeo' Coates, who had been run over and killed in the previous February. In 1864 Boyd published a pamphlet on Australian matters; in 1871 his 'Reminiscences of Fifty Years,' and in 1875 his 'Social Gleanings,' dedicating the first to the Australian colonists, and the last (from Oatlands, Walton-on-Thames) to Dean Ramsay. He died in London on 12 Sept. 1879, aged 74.
[Boyd's Reminiscences of Fifty Years, Dedication, vi, vii, and pp. 102, 310, 333, 336, 368, 397, 464, 466; Annual Reg. 1848, p. 216, 1879, p. 222; Gent. Mag. N.S. xxx. 648.]
J. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Boyd, Benjamin

​BOYD, BENJAMIN (1796–1851), Australian squatter, second son of Edward Boyd of Merton Hall, Wigtonshire, by his wife, Jane, eldest daughter of Benjamin Yule of Wheatfield, Midlothian, and brother of Mark Boyd [q. v.], was born at Merton Hall about 1796, and, after being in business as a stockbroker in the city of London from 1824 to 1839, went out to Sydney in 1840-41 for the purpose of organising the various branches of the Royal Banking Company of Australia. Acting on behalf of this company, he purchased station property in the Monaro district, Riverina, Queensland, and elsewhere. At the first-named place he erected large stores and premises for boiling down his sheep into tallow. He at the same time speculated largely in whaling, and Twofold Bay became the rendezvous for his whaling ships. On the south head of the bay he put up a lighthouse for the purpose of directing vessels coming to his wharf. Another business which he carried on extensively was shipping cattle to Tasmania, New Zealand, and other markets. Boyd had also in view the making of Boyd Town, which he had founded, a place of commercial importance, by stealing a march on the government, who had made Eden the official township. He was the first, or amongst the first, to attempt to procure cheap labour in Australia by the employment of South Sea Islanders as shepherds, but the scheme proved abortive. Meantime the company grew dissatisfied with Boyd's management, and after a good deal of trouble Boyd agreed to retire and to resign all claims on the company on condition of receiving three of the whaling ships, his yacht, called the Wanderer, in which he had come from England, and two sections of land at Twofold Bay. His next enterprise was to embark with a digging party on board the Wanderer and to sail for California in 1850 at the time of the gold excitement there. He was unsuccessful in his search for gold, and was on his way back to Sydney in 1851 when his yacht touched at one of the islands in the Solomon group, known as [[w:Guadalcanal|Gandalcanar}}. There he went ashore with a black boy to have some shooting, and was never seen again. The affairs of the Royal Banking Company were ultimately wound up, when the shareholders had to make good a deficiency of 80,000l. Boyd also had large estates of his own, amounting to 381,000 acres, for which, in 1847, he paid an annual license of 80l. He was in his time the largest squatter in the Australian colonies. He never married.
[Heaton's Australian Dictionary of Dates (1879), pp. 23-24.]
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Boyd, Henry

​BOYD, HENRY (d. 1832), translator of Dante, was a native of Ireland, and was most probably educated at Dublin University. He published a translation of Dante's 'Inferno' in English verse, the first of its kind, with a specimen of the 'Orlando Furioso' of Ariosto, 1785. It was printed by subscription, and dedicated to the Earl of Bristol, bishop of Derry. The dedication is dated from Killeigh, near Tullamore, of which place presumably Boyd was incumbent. In 1796 he published 'Poems chiefly Dramatic and Lyric,' As early as 1791 the 'ingenious and unfortunate author' was seeking subscriptions for his original poems (Nichols, Lit. Illustrations, vii. 717). In 1802 he issued three volumes of an English verse translation of the whole 'Divina Commedia' of Dante, with preliminary essays, notes, and illustrations, which was dedicated to Viscount Charleville, whose chaplain the author is described to be in the title-page. In the dedication Boyd states that the terrors of the Irish rebellion, had driven him from the post of danger at Lord Charleville's side to seek a safe asylum in a 'remote angle of the province.' In 1805 he was seeking a publisher for his translation, of the 'Araucana' of Ercilla, a long poem, which 'was too great an undertaking for Edinburgh publishers,' and for which he vainly sought a purchaser in London (ibid. 120, 149). In 1805 he published the 'Penance of Hugo, a Vision,' translated from the Italian of Vincenzo Monti, with two additional cantos; and the 'Woodman's Tale,' a poem after the manner and metre of Spenser's 'Faery Queen.' The latter poem formed really the first of a collection of poems and odes. These poems were to have been published at Edinburgh, and Boyd seems to have acted badly in making an engagement with a London house to publish them after they had been announced there (ibid. 157). In the title-pages to both these works the author is described as vicar of Drumgath in Ireland; but in all biographical notices and in the obituary record of the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for September 1832, the date of his death, he is invariably described simply as vicar of Rathfriland and chaplain to the Earl of Charleville. Anderson, writing to Bishop Percy in 1806, says that he had received some squibs written by Boyd against Mone, and that the humour was coarse and indelicate (ibid. 171). In 1807 he issued the 'Triumphs of Petrarch,' translated, into ​English verse, and in 1809 some notes of his on the Fallen Angela in 'Paradise Lost' were published, with other notes and essays on Milton, under the superintendence of the Rev. Henry Todd. He died at Ballintemple, near Newry, at an advanced age, 18 Sept. 1832.
[Nichols's Illustrations of Literature, vii. 120, 149, 157, 171, 717; Gent. Mag. vol. lv. pt. i., vol. cii. pt ii.; Boyd's Dante, Dedication.]
B. C. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Boyd, Hugh Stuart

​BOYD, HUGH STUART (1781–1848), Greek scholar, was born at Edgware. Before his birth his father, Hugh McAuley, took the name of Boyd, borne by the family of his wife, the daughter of Hugh Boyd of Ballycastle, Ireland [q. v.], one of the supposed authors of the 'Letters of Junius.' His mother's maiden name was Murphy. Boyd ​was admitted a pensioner of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, on 24 July 1799, and matriculated on 17 Dec. of the following year. He left the university without taking a degree. He had a good memory, and once made a curious calculation that he could repeat 3,280 'lines' of Greek prose and 4,770 lines of Greek verse. In 1833 he appears to have resided some time at Bath. During the last twenty years of his life he was blind. He married a lady of Jewish family, and by her had one daughter, Henrietta, married to Mr. Henry Hayes. He lived chiefly at Hampstead, and died at Kentish Town on 10 May 1848. While blind he taught Greek to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was much attached to him. One of her poems, the 'Wine of Cyprus,' is dedicated to Boyd. She also wrote a sonnet on his blindness and another on his death. His published works are:
* 'Luceria, a Tragedy,' 1806.
* 'Select Passages from the Works of St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, &c., translated,' 1810.
* 'Select Poems of Synesius, translated,' with original poems, 1814.
* 'Thoughts on the Atoning Sacrifice,' 1817.
* 'Agamemnon of Æschylus,' translated, 1823.
* 'An Essay on the Greek Article,' included in Clarke's 'Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians,' second edition, 1835.
* 'The Catholic Faith,' a sermon of St. Basil, translated, 1825.
* 'Thoughts on an illustrious Exile,' 1825.
* 'Tributes to the Dead,' translation from St. Gregory Nazianzen, 1826.
* 'A Malvern Tale, and other Poems,' 1827.
* 'The Fathers not Papists, with Select Passages and Tributes to the Dead,' 1834.
[Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. v. 88, 175, 226, vii. 284, 523, 3rd ser. iv. 458; Etheridge's Life of Dr. Adam Clarke, 382-4; Weldon's Register, August 1861, p. 56; Gent. Mag. vol. xcvi. pt. ii. p. 623, new ser. xxx. p. 130; Brit. Mus. Catal.]
W. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Fauquier, Francis

1904 Errata appended.
​FAUQUIER, FRANCIS (1704?–1768), financial writer, lieutenant-governor of Virginia, was the eldest son of Dr. John Francis Fauquier, one of the directors of the Bank of England, who died 22 Sept. 1726 (Hist. Reg. for 1726, p. 37). His mother's name was Elizabeth Chamberlayne. He was a director of the South Sea Company in 1751, and was elected fellow of the Royal Society on 15 Feb. 1753. In January 1758 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Virginia. Dr. W. Gordon (Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States, i. 136) says: ‘Towards the close of 1759 or the beginning of 1760 Mr. Pitt wrote to Francis Fauquier, esq., lieut.-governor of Virginia, and mentioned in his letter that though they had made grants to the colonies, yet when the war was over they should tax them in order to raise a revenue from them. Mr. Fauquier in his answer expressed his apprehension that the measure would occasion great disturbance. The answer might divert Mr. Pitt from his intention.’ Five years later Fauquier had to dissolve the Virginian House of Burgesses on the passing of Patrick Henry's famous resolutions about taxation (ib. i. 171). He died at Williamsburg on 3 March 1768. One of the Virginian counties is named after him. He was married to Sir Charles Dalston's daughter, Catharine, who was buried at Totteridge in 1781.
In ‘An Essay on Ways and Means of Raising Money for the support of the present War without Increasing the Public Debts,’ 1756, Fauquier, adopting an idea of Sir Matthew Decker, proposed that 3,300,000l. a year should be raised by a tax on houses. But in a postscript attached to the second edition (1756) he explains that what he wished to do was not to recommend that particular tax, but to insist on the desirability of paying all charges within the year, and he suggests a kind of capitation or income tax as a substitute for his first proposal. He held strongly the theory that by no means could any taxation be made to fall on the poor. ‘The poor do not, never have, nor possibly can, pay any tax whatever’ (p. 17). The first edition of the essay (which is dedicated to Lord Anson) only bears the author's initials; the second has his name in full. A third edition was published in 1757. There are in the British Museum nine letters written by Fauquier to Colonel Bouquet between 1759 and 1764, chiefly respecting the military forces of Virginia, and one to Sir Henry Moore, dated 3 Feb. 1766 (Addit. MSS. 21644, 21648, 21650, 21651, and 12440). A paper on a hailstorm observed by him in Virginia on 9 July 1758 was read to the Royal Society (Philosophical Transactions, l. 746) by his brother William, who was elected fellow in 1746 and died in 1788 (Lysons, Environs of London, iv. 406).
E. C-n.
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# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Faunt, Nicholas

​FAUNT, NICHOLAS (fl. 1572–1608), clerk of the signet, was a native of Norfolk. A person of the same names, who was mayor of Canterbury and M.P. for the city in 1460, played a prominent part in Warwick's rebellion of 1471, actively supported the Bastard of Fauconberg [q. v.] in his raid on London, and was beheaded at Canterbury by Edward IV's orders in May 1471 (Warkworth, Chron. pp. 20, 21, 67). The clerk to the signet matriculated as a pensioner at Caius College, Cambridge, in June 1572, and was admitted a scholar of Corpus Christi ​College in the same university in 1573. In the interval he visited Paris, witnessed the St. Bartholomew massacre, and was one of the first to bring the news to England. About 1580 he became secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham, and was engaged in carrying despatches to English agents abroad and sending home ‘intelligence.’ In August 1580, while in Paris, he met Anthony Bacon [q. v.], who became his intimate friend. Early in 1581 he spent three and a half months in Germany, and was at Pisa, Padua, and Geneva later in the same year. He came from Paris in March 1582 and returned in February 1587–8. His many letters, sent home while on the continent, show him to have been an assiduous collector of information and a trustworthy public servant. On 23 Nov. 1585 he became M.P. for Boroughbridge. When settled in England Faunt was very friendly with both Anthony and Francis Bacon, and, as an earnest puritan, was implicitly trusted by their mother, Ann, lady Bacon, who often wrote to her sons imploring them to benefit by Faunt's advice. He met Anthony on his return from the continent early in 1592, and conducted him to his brother Francis's lodgings in Gray's Inn. ‘He is not only an honest gentleman in civil behaviour,’ wrote Lady Bacon at the time, ‘but one that feareth God indeed, and as wise withal, having experience of our state, as able to advise you both very wisely and very friendly’ (Spedding, Life of Bacon, i. 112). In 1603 Faunt was clerk of the signet, an office which he was still holding on 20 Sept. 1607. In March 1605–6 there was talk of his succeeding Winwood as ambassador at the Hague. In 1594 Faunt obtained a grant of crown lands in Yorkshire; in 1607 the reversion to Fulbrook Park, Warwickshire, and in the same year a promise from Sir Robert Cecil to obtain some of the land belonging to the see of York. He married (before 1585) the daughter of a London merchant. He wrote ‘A Discourse touching the Office of Principal Secretary of State,’ 1592 (unprinted), in Bodleian Library, Tanner MS. 80, f. 91.
S. L. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Faussett, Thomas Godfrey

​FAUSSETT, THOMAS GODFREY, afterwards T. G. Godfrey-Faussett (1829–1877), antiquary, born at Oxford in 1829, was a younger son of the Rev. Godfrey Faussett, D.D., canon of Christ Church, by his second wife, Sarah, daughter of Thomas Wethered of Marlow. When young he lived much at Worcester, where his father was then prebendary. He inherited the tastes of his great-grandfather, Bryan Faussett, the antiquary [q. v.], and as a boy studied history and heraldry. He became scholar and fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. In 1862 (or 1863) he was called to the bar, ​but did not practise. In 1866 he went to live at Canterbury, where he was in that year appointed auditor to the dean and chapter. He was auditor till his death. In 1871 he was also appointed district registrar of the probate court at Canterbury. In March 1859 he had been elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. From 1863 to 1873 he was honorary secretary of the Kent Archæological Society. He published articles in the ‘Archæologia Cantiana,’ including ‘Canterbury till Domesday’ (1861) and an account of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery opened by him at Patrixbourne, Kent (vol. x.). He wrote on the ‘Law of Treasure Trove’ in vol. xxii. of the ‘Archæological Journal.’ He specially studied the antiquities of Canterbury, and contributed the article ‘Canterbury’ to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ (9th edit.). He also wrote a memoir of Bryan Faussett, printed in Roach Smith's edition of the ‘Inventorium Sepulchrale.’ Faussett succeeded Larking as editor of the large history of Kent begun by Streatfeild; but the ill-health from which he suffered from about 1866 till his death prevented his continuing the work. From about 1873 he was hardly ever able to hold a pen. In spite of this, Faussett, living in his pleasant house in the cathedral precincts, was a man of habitual cheerfulness, and composed hundreds of clever squibs and epigrams in Latin and English. Specimens of these and several of his graceful Latin hymns are printed in the ‘Memorials of T. G. Faussett,’ published in 1878 (two editions) by the Rev. W. J. Loftie.
Faussett died at Canterbury 26 Feb. 1877, and was buried in Nackington churchyard, near that city. In 1869, in common with other members of the family, he took the surname of Godfrey-Faussett. He married in 1864 Lucy Jane, daughter of Henry Woodcock of Bank House, near Wigan; an only child, Edward Godfrey, born 1868, survived him.
W. W.