Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771 in Edinburgh. He was educated at Edinburgh High School, 1779-1783 and Edinburgh University, where he studied arts, 1783-1786 and law, 1789-1792. In 1792 Scott was called to the bar and was appointed sheriff-deputy for the county of Selkirkshire in 1799. In 1806 he became clerk to the Court of Session in Edinburgh. In 1813 Scott became a partner in a printing and publishing business, James Ballantyne & Co. In 1825 the company went bankrupt and Scott found himself personally liable for the payments of debt. The company folded the following year. Scott wrote both prose and poetry. His first works were two translations of German ballads by Bürger published in 1796 and 1799. His two volume work Minstrels of The Scottish Border appeared between 1802-1803. His first novel Waverly was published in 1814. He also contributed to the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review. Scott was created a baronet in 1820, the same year as his novel The Abbot was published. He died at Abbotsford on 21 September 1832.
Algernon Charles Swinburne was born in Grosvenor Place, London on 5 April 1837. Swinburne attended Eton in 1849 before entering Balliol College, Oxford in 1856. He left Oxford without graduating in 1860. He contributed to periodicals including the Spectator and Fortnightly Review. The first poem to be published under his name was Atalanta in Calydon (1865), which was received with critical acclaim. He also wrote the political work Songs before Sunrise and continued to write until a few years before his death. He died of influenza on 10 April 1909.
Robert Burns was born in Alloway, Ayrshire on 25 January 1759. From 1765 to 1768 Burns was educated at an 'adventure' school by his father, neighbours and a teacher, John Murdoch. In 1775 he attended a mathematics school in Kirkswald. Burns spent his youth working on his father's tenant farm and by the age of 15 he was the principle worker on the farm. At this early age Burns began to write poetry about aspects of Scottish life. On the death of his father in 1784, Robert and his brother became partners in the farm. Robert abandoned farming in 1785 to concentrate on writing poetry.
He published his first collection of poems, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect - Kilmarnock Edition, in 1786. Burns moved to Edinburgh where he won critical acclaim for his poetry amongst the Edinburgh literati. In 1787 he was sponsored by the Caledonian Hunt to publish a new edition of his poems. He left Edinburgh in 1788 for Ellisfarm near Dumfries to begin farming once again. However he continued to write poetry. In 1789 Burns began working for the Excise in Dumfries and in 1791 he left the farm to live and work in the town. Burns died in Dumfries from heart disease on 21 July 1796.
Evelyn Baring was born on 26 February 1841 at Cromer Hall, Norfolk He was educated at the Ordnance School, Carshalton; Woolwich, 1855-1858. In 1858 Baring entered the Royal Artillery, and was commissioned in 1870. He reached the rank of Major in 1876. Whilst in the Royal Artillery, Baring was stationed in the Ionian Islands, where he learnt Greek. Whilst there he took on secretarial duties before undertaking similar roles in Jamaica and India. In 1876 Baring was sent to Egypt where he became the Commissioner of Egyptian Public Debt between 1877-1879 and Controller-General in 1879. Baring was appointed a financial member of the Council of the Governor General of India in 1880. He returned to the imperial administration of Egypt in 1884, serving first as the Financial Assistant at the Conference in London on Egyptian Finance in 1884 and as Agent and Consul-General in Egypt between 1883-1907.
Baring was created Baron Cromer in 1892; Viscount Cromer in 1899 and Earl of Cromer in 1901. During his career in the army and the Civil Service, Baring was awarded the CIE, 1876; KCSI, 1883; CB 1885; KCB 1887; OM and GCMG 1888; and GCB 1895.
Baring wrote works on politics, the military and the classics. In 1910 he became chair of the Classical Association. He died in London on 21 January 1912.
The poem was written by the Chandos Herald, the domestic Herald of Sir John Chandos, who was a devoted friend and follower of Edward the Black Prince. Little is known of the life of the author, except that he accompanied Sir John Chandos in some of his later military campaigns, and was therefore in the position of eyewitness to the events he describes. The poem was composed about 1385, nine years after the death of Edward.
Thomas Smith was born in 1513. He studied at Queen's College, Cambridge University, gaining an MA in 1533. He was created Regius Professor of Civil law and Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge University in 1544. Created Secretary of State in 1548, Smith was knighted the same year. He was Ambassador to France, 1562-1566, and was later readmitted to the Privy Council, 1571, and reappointed Secretary of State, 1572. Smith died in 1577. Publications: An Old Mould to cast New Lawes (1643); De Republica Anglorum (1583); De recta & emendata Linguae Graecae pronuntiatione (1568); De recta & emendata Linguae Anglicae Scriptione (1568); The Authority, form, and manner of holding Parliaments; Sir Thomas Smithes Voiage and Entertainment in Rushia (N. Butter: London, 1605).
There was a movement in the early 18th century on the part of British merchants to get a free importation of iron, though plantation iron was most spoken of. The home manufacturers and proprietors of iron works objected.
Vincenzo Bellini, Italian opera composer, was born in Catania, Sicily, Italy in 1801. Having grown up in a musical household, it is alleged that he was a child prodigy, playing piano well by the age of five, and composing at six. Bellini is best known for his opera 'Norma' (1831) the title role of which is considered the most difficult role in the soprano repertoire. He composed Bel Canto operas, including 'Adelson e Salvini' (1825), 'Bianca e Gernando' (1826), 'Il pirata (1827), 'Bianca e Fernando (1828), 'La straniera' (1829), 'Zaira' (1829), 'I Capuleti e i Montecchi' (1830), 'La sonnambula' (1831), 'Beatrice di Tenda' (1833) and 'I puritani di Scozia' (1835). Bellini died in Puteaux, near Paris in 1835, and was buried next to Chopin in Pere Lachaise.
Elizabeth von Janstein, author, poet and journalist, born in the Austrian town of Iglau in 1893; worked as a receptionist in Vienna, where, after 1918, she became involved with the reform groupings around Eugenie Schwarzwald. Within this grouping she first began to write, supported by such names as Emil Lucka, Felix Braun and Emil Alphons Rheinhardt. Between 1918 and 1921, she published poetry in expressionist journals Die Aktion and Der Friede. In the 1920s, Janstein worked as a court reporter for the Abend and shortly afterwards became correspondent for the Neue Freie Press in Paris and Brussels from where she contributed articles on politics, culture and society until 1939. She was also Vice-President of the Federation Internationale des Journalistes between 1935 and 1936. At the outbreak of World War II, Janstein fled to England and was interned by the British government, falling ill shortly after her release and dying in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire in December 1944.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No further information available at present.
Born London, April 1897; educated at St George's College, London (1913-1915), King's College London (1919-1921) and the London School of Economics (1921-1922). Craig also served in the First World War between 1915 and 1919 as a Lieutenant. His early career was spent as a clerk at the Public Record Office in London, 1912-1919. In 1919, Craig moved to the Exchequer and Audit Department as an auditor and rose through the ranks, finally becoming deputy director of audit in 1947. Throughout his life, Craig also published widely on sex education and the censorship of literature on the grounds of obscenity, along with taking an active part in left-wing and socialist propaganda for sex reform in the 1930s. Publications: Sex and Revolution (1934), The Banned Books of England (1937) and Above All Liberties (1942). He also contributed to a number of books and journals including Experiments in Sex Education (1935), Sex, Society and the Individual (1953) and The Encyclopaedia of Sexual Behaviour (1961). In later life, Craig also published his verse and works include The Voice of Merlin (1946) and The Prometheans (1955).
Henry Somerton Foxwell, born 17 June 1849, Somerset, the son of an ironmonger and slate and timber merchant. He received his early educated at the Weslyian Collegiate Institute, Taunton; passed the London Matriculation examination at the minimum age; obtained a London External BA Degree at the age of 18; admitted to St. John's College, Cambridge, 1868; placed senior in the Moral Sciences Tripos in 1870 and was associated with the College for the rest of his life; made a Fellow in 1874 and held his College lectureship for sixty years. In the University he was largely responsible for the honours teaching of economics from 1877 to 1908; Foxwell was assistant lecturer to his friend Stanley Jevons who had held the Chair of Economics at University College London from 1868 and then succeeded Jevons as chair in May 1881, holding the post until 1927; at the same time, Foxwell was Newmarch Lecturer in statistics at University College London and a lecturer on currency and banking from 1896 at London School of Economics. In 1907 he became joint Professor of Political Economy in the University of London, and in addition gave extra-mural lectures for Cambridge University from 1874 and for London from 1876 to 1881 in London, Leeds, Halifax and elsewhere. He also held the following appointments: external examiner for London, Cambridge and other universities; first Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of London; vice-president and president of the Council of the Royal Economic Society; member of the Councils of the Statistical Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science; and secretary and later president of the University (Cambridge) Musical Society and the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. He also provided a course of lectures at the Institute of Actuaries. Foxwell was a dedicated book-collector and bibliophile and concentrated on the purchase of economic books printed before 1848. He described his library as a collection of books and tracts intended to serve as the basis for the study of the industrial, commercial, monetary and financial history of the United Kingdom and the gradual development of economic science generally. Foxwell's library provides the nucleus of the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature. When The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths purchased the library of economic literature from Foxwell in 1901 for £10,000 it contained about 30,000 books. The Company also generously provided Foxwell with a series of subventions following the purchase of the Library to enable him to make further acquisitions prior to the gift of the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature to the University of London in 1903. From the sale in 1901, Foxwell kept back duplicates that formed a second collection which he sold to Harvard University for £4,000 in 1929. From the termination of dealings with the Goldsmiths' Company in 1903, he began creating a second major collection. By his death, on 3 August 1936, Foxwell had amassed a further 20,000 volumes that were sold to Harvard University creating the focus for the Kress Library.
Information not available at present.
The registers were printed in Enkhuisen by Jan von Guissen.
Lord Lovat took part in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 and was impeached by the House of Lords. He was executed on Tower Hill, London, on 9th April 1747. His son, whom he had involved in the rebellion was pardoned in 1750 and was granted his father's forfeited lands in 1774.
In 1523 King Francis I of France established a new central treasury, the Trésor de l'Épargne, into which all his revenues, ordinary and extraordinary, were to be deposited. In 1542 he set up 16 financial and administrative divisions, the généralités, appointing in each a collector general with the responsibility for the collection of all royal revenues within his area. In 1551 King Henry II added a treasurer general; from 1577 the bureaux des finances, new supervisory bodies composed of a collector general and a number of treasurers, made their appearance in each généralité.
Information not available at present.
Gregory King's work was not published until 1802, when George Chalmers added it to a new edition of his Estimate of the comparative strength of Great Britain. It was later reprinted in Two Tracts ed George E Barnett (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1936).
The English Royal Mint was responsible for the making of coins according to exact compositions, weights, dimensions and tolerances, usually determined by law. Minting in England was reorganised by King Edward I to facilitate a general recoinage in 1279. This established a unified system which was run from the Royal Mint in London by the Master and Warden of the Mint.. There remained smaller mints in Canterbury and elsewhere until 1553, when English minting was concentrated into a single establishment in London. For several centuries control of policy relating to the coinage rested soley with the monarch, with Parliament finally gaining control following the Revolution of 1688. The Mint itself worked as an independent body until that date, when it came under the control of the Treasury.
The term 'customs' applied to customary payments or dues of any kind, regal, episcopal or ecclesiastical until it became restricted to duties payable to the King upon export or import of certain articles of commerce. A Board of Customs for England and Wales was created by Letter Patent in 1671.
The Hudson Bay Company was incorporated in England on May 2, 1670, to seek a northwest passage to the Pacific, to occupy the lands adjacent to Hudson Bay, and to carry on any commerce with those lands that might prove profitable. The Company engaged in the fur trade during its first two centuries of existence. In the 1670s and '80s the company established a number of posts on the shores of James and Hudson bays. Most of these posts were captured by the French and were in French hands between 1686 and 1713, when they were restored to the company by the Treaty of Utrecht. It still exists as a commercial company active in real estate, merchandising, and natural resources, with headquarters in Toronto.
Sir James William Morrison (1774-1850) was Third Clerk to the Master of the Royal Mint, 1792, and also worked as an assistant in the melting house. On 31 Dec 1801, he replaced his father, James Morrison, as First Clerk, Purveyor and Deputy Master of the Mint, a post which he held until 1850.
Craven Ord (1756-1832) was Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He compiled a fine collection of impressions of brasses and of historical manuscripts. His Suffolk collections are in the British Museum. Publications: Description of a carving in the Church of Long Melford (London, 1794); Vain boastings of Frenchmen. The same in 1386 as in 1798. Being an account of the threatened invasion of England by the French the 10th year of King Richard II. Extracted from ancient chronicles (J. Pridden, London, 1798).
No information available.
It appears that the English and Bristol Channels Ship Canal was never actually built. Two proposals were originally considered. First was a route from the south coast at Seaton through to Bridgewater, the second running further west via Taunton and Exeter. At the time of these records a Bill was passed in Parliament allowing the building of a canal from Bridgwater Bay to Beer near Seaton. The canal would have been 44 miles long with 60 locks. By 1828 the company announced they had failed in raising the necessary money to get the project off the ground.
Bombay was ceded to the East India Company by the English crown in 1668. With the destruction of Maratha power, trade and communications to the mainland were established and those to Europe were extended. In 1857 the first spinning and weaving mill was established, and by 1860 Bombay had become the largest cotton market in India.
No information was discovered at the time of compilation.
Early in his life Sir George entered the East India House of Cockerell & Larpent. He went on to become Chairman of the Oriental and China Association and Deputy Chair of St Katherine's Dock Company. In 1841 he was created a baronet and during that same year was elected to represent Nottingham. He died in 1855.
The Select Committee for the Improvement of the Law of Debtor and Creditor was set up in 1849 to gather evidence relating to a 'Bill to amend, methodise and consolidate the laws relating to bankrupts and to arrangements between debtors and their creditors'. The bill was read in the House of Commons during 1849.
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-1889) was a scholar and librarian of Jesus College, Cambridge University. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1839, and acted as an editor for the Camden Society, 1839-1844, the Percy Society, 1842-1850, and the Shakespeare Society. A renowned Shakespeare scholar, he arranged and described the Shakespeare archives at Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote extensively on the town, and initiated the movement for the purchase of the site of Shakespeare's house at New Place, [1863]. A list of his publications may be found in the British Library catalogue.
The Court of Wards was established in 1540 (in 1542, as Wards and Liveries) to deal with monies owed to the king by virtue of his position as a feudal lord; it was also empowered to protect certain rights of marriage and wardship. The Court of Wards and Liveries remained separate from the Exchequer until it was abolished in 1660.
The Commission was set up under the Great Seal (Privy Council) on 1 Jul 1626, to try and reduce debts incurred by the Royal Household.
Samuel Lambe's publications include: Seasonable observations humbly offered to His Highness the Lord Protector, (London, 1657); The humble Representation of S. L. [respecting the Commerce of England] [London? 1658?].
Excise are inland duties levied on articles at the time of their manufacture, notably, alcoholic drinks, but has also included salt, paper and glass. In 1643 a Board of Excise was established by the Long Parliament, to organize the collection of duties in London and the provinces. Excise duty was settled by statute in 1660. A permanent board of Excise for England and Wales was established in 1683 with separate boards for Ireland in 1682 and Scotland in 1707.
No information was discovered at the time of compilation.
No information was discovered at the time of compilation.
No information was discovered at the time of compilation.
Sir Edwin Sandys (1561-1629) was Prebendary of York from 1582-1602, and MP for Andover, 1586, and Plympton, 1589 and 1593. He travelled abroad with Archbishop Cramner, where he wrote 'Europae Speculum' (1599), which was piratically published as A Relation of the state of religion; and with what hopes and policies it hath beene framed and is maintained in the severall states of these westerne parts of the world, (S Waterson, London, 1605). On his return to England in 1603, Sandys was knighted, became MP for Stockbridge, and assumed a leading position in the House of Commons. He was later MP for Sandwich, 1621, Kent, 1624, and Penryn, 1625 and 1626. In addition, Sandys was deeply involved in the colonisation and government of Virginia, acting as joint Manager, 1617, and Treasurer, 1619-1620, of the Virginia Company. Sandys died in 1629.
Quarter Sessions were sessions of a court held in each county four times a year by a local Justice of the Peace to hear criminal charges as well as civil and criminal appeals. The history of quarter sessions traces to 1327, when King Edward III appointed men in every county to keep the peace.
Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824) was a numismatist. Having travelled in Sicily, in 1777, he began to form a magnificent collection of bronzes, which he bequeathed upon his death to the British Museum. He was MP for Leominster, 1780, and Ludlow, 1784-1806. He was Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, and wrote extensively on ancient art.
Peru was a Spanish colony from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and was governed by a series of Spanish viceroys from the capital at Lima.
Charles Hutton (1737-1823) was the son of a colliery labourer. He opened a mathematical school at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1760, and became Professor of Mathematics at the Woolwich Academy from 1773 to 1807. During this period, he also acted as editor of the Ladies Diary, 1773-1818. Hutton was a Fellow of the Royal Society, 1774, became the Copley medallist in 1778, and acted as its foreign secretary in 1779. Amongst other work, Hutton calculated the mean density of the earth in 1778. Publications: The compendious measurer; being a brief, yet comprehensive, treatise on mensuration and practical geometry. With an introduction to decimal and duodecimal arithmetic (G.G.J. and J. Robinson, and R. Baldwin ... and G. and J. Wilkie ..., London, 1786); The school-master's guide: or, a complete system of practical arithmetic, adapted to the use of schools (I. Thompson, Esq, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1764); A Computation of the length of the sine of a circular arc of one minute of a degree; A course of mathematics, in two volumes: composed, and more especially designed, for the use of the gentlemen cadets in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich (G.G. and J. Robinson, London, 1798); A mathematical and philosophical dictionary: containing an explanation of the terms, and an account of the several subjects, comprized under the heads mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy both natural and experimental ... also memoirs of the lives and writings of the most eminent authors, both ancient and modern (J. Johnson; G. G. & J. Robinson, London, 1795); A treatise on Mensuration, both in theory and practice (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1770); An account of the Calculations made from the survey and measures taken at Schehallien, in order to ascertain the mean density of the earth (London, 1779); Mathematical Tables ... containing ... logarithms ... with tables useful in mathematical calculations. To which is prefixed a large ... history of the ... writings relating to those subjects, etc.. London, 1785; The principles of bridges: containing the mathematical demonstrations of the properties of the arches, the thickness of the piers, the force of the water against them (T. Saint, London, 1772).
The years of Louis XIV of France's minority were dominated by the civil disturbances known as The Frondes. These were caused by the attempts of the Government, and especially Cardinal Jules Mazarin, to raise revenue for the war with Spain using arbitrary measures which antagonised a wide cross-section of Parisian society. The two outbreaks were the Fronde of the Parlement (1648-1649) and the Fronde of the Princes (1650-1652), the latter being led by Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Condé. Though dominant for a short period, the Grand Condé was eventually defeated and fled to the Spanish Netherlands. Louis XIV entered Paris in triumph on October 21, 1652.
Darley is a village near Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
The East India Company (formally called the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies (1600-1708) and the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies (1708-1873)), was an English company formed for the exploitation of the spice trade in East and Southeast Asia and India. It was incorporated by Royal Charter in December 1600.
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, first opened in 1663 under a Royal Charter from Charles II. In 1672 it was badly damaged by fire, and replaced by a new theatre designed by Sir Christopher Wren, which was opened in 1674.
No information was discovered at the time of compilation.
The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is on 15th August.