Robert Stephenson, the only son of the engineer George Stephenson, was born in Northumerland and educated at school in Newcastle upon Tyne and at the University of Edinburgh. He followed his father into the engineering profession and became a successful railway engineer in his own right, remembered particularly for his bridge designs. Stephenson was MP for Whitby from 1847 until his death in 1859, and served as president of Institution of Civil Engineers during 1856-1857.
William Collingwood Smith was a noted watercolourist, whose work was often featured in the London Illustrated News.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Sir Thomas (Tam) Dalyell was born in England and brought up at The Binns, West Lothian, Scotland. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge. As a young man he supported the Conservatives, but he joined the Labour Party after the 1956 Suez Crisis. Dalyell served as MP for West Lothian from 1962 until 1983. Following boundary changes, he was MP for Lithlingow from 1983 until he retired in 2005; at the time of his retirement he was Father of the House. As a working politician Dalyell was known for his strong and outspoken views. He inherited the Dalyell of the Binns baronetcy through his mother but does not use the title.
David Edward Alexander Lindsay was born in Aberdeen and educated at Eton and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was elected Conservative MP for Chorley, Lancashire in 1895, and retained the seat until succeeding his father in the House of Lords in 1913. He was chief whip between July 1911 and January 1913. Lord Crawford largely retired from active politics in the early 1920s and was subsequently chiefly known as a patron of the arts, an area that had interested him for many years. His diary, kept continously from 1892 until his sudden death in 1940 and rich in political detail, was published in 1984.
William Hazlitt was Registrar of the London Court of Bankruptcy but is better known for overseeing the posthumous publication and republication of many of the works of his father, also William Hazlitt (1778-1830). His son, William Carew Hazlitt (1834-1913) also became a well-known writer.
Jean-Baptiste Biot was born in Paris and educated at the Ecole Polytechnique. His fields of research included astonomy, the Earth's atmosphere, and light and optics, but he is best known for his work on electricity and magnetism; the Biot-Savart law in electromagnetics is named after him, and Felix Savart.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Joseph Hume was born in Montrose, Forfarshire in 1777. He studied medicine in Aberdeen and Edinburgh before becoming a surgeon. Employed by the East India Company, he worked as a doctor and intelligence officer in India for several years and later travelled through Europe before settling again in Britain. Hume entered parliament in 1812 as MP for Weymouth and subsequently served as MP for Aberdeen Burghs, Middlesex, Kilkenny and Montrose Burghs. He was very active in the House of Commons and often supported radical causes.
Thomas Joplin was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in c 1790. He initially worked in the family business as a timber merchant but left in the early 1820s and devoted his life to studying political economy and monetary considerations, and to promoting joint-stock banking. In 1833 he co-founded the National Provincial Bank (now part of the National Westminster Bank).
Jean Joseph Louis Blanc was born in Spain in 1811. He was brought up and educated in Corsica. He moved to Paris shortly before the July Revolution of 1830 and became a journalist, historian and leading socialist thinker. Exiled from France, he lived in England from 1848 to 1870, where he became popular in Chartist and in labour circles and was in close contact with other left-wing emigres. He returned to France in 1870 and served in the French National Assembly during 1871-1876.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
James Ludovic Lindsay was educated at Eton and Trinity College Cambridge before entering the Grendier Guards. He served as MP for Wigan from 1874 until 1880, when he entered the House of Lords on his father's death. Lord Crawford was a keen astronomer and bibliophile, maintaining an observatory in Scotland and a extensive library at the family seat of Haigh Hall, near Wigan. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and, at various times, President of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Philatelic Society, the Royal Photographic Society and the Camden Society.
George Long was born in Lancashire in 1800. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1822. He became a fellow of Trinity in 1823 and Professor of Ancient Languages at the newly-founded University of Virginia in 1824, returning to England in 1828 as Professor of Greek at the University of London (afterwards University College London), a chair which he held until his resignation in 1831; he returned to University College between 1842 and 1846 as Professor of Latin. Besides classics, Long was also interested in geography and law: he co-founded the Royal Geographical Society in 1830 and lectured at the Middle Temple from 1846 to 1849. He also wrote and edited publications on various topics for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. From 1849 Long lectured a new progressive school, Brighton College, and remained influential in the field of classical scholarship. After retiring in 1871 he lived in Chichester until his death.
Gaston Maspero was born in Paris in 1846. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure. Whilst still a student he met Auguste Mariette and became interested in Egyptology. He taught the Egyptian language and archaeology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and the Collège de France before heading an archaeological expedition to Egypt in 1880. In 1881 he succeeded Mariette as the director-general of excavations. In 1886 he resumed his professorship in Paris but returned to Egypt in 1899 where he remained director-general of antiquities until his retirement in 1914. The archaeologist Howard Carter was his protegée. Unusually for a foreigner, Maspero was awarded a British knighthood in 1909.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
William Pitt was born in Kent in 1759. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He entered Parliament as MP for Appleby-in-Westmoreland in 1781 and later served as MP for Cambridge University. He served as Prime Minister twice (1783-1801, 1804-1806); aged just 24 at the time of his first appointment. He remains the youngest person ever to become British Prime Minster. He was successful in controlling the financial affairs of government, but was unable to bring about Catholic emancipation, abolition of the slave trade or parliamentary reform. He was known as Pitt the Younger to distinguish him from his father (Pitt the Elder), William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.
Louis Saul Sterling was born in New York on 16 May 1879. In 1903 he left the United States for London, where he began working as a travelling representative for Gramophone and Typewriter Ltd. The following year, Sterling became manager of the British Zonophone Company, which produced playing machines and disc records. In 1905 Sterling established the Sterling Record Company, which was bought, within a few months, by the Russell Hunting Record Company. Sterling became the managing director of the firm. By 1908 Sterling had formed the Rena Manufacturing Company which produced playing machines and records. In 1909 the Columbia Phonograph Company bought Rena and Sterling was appointed Columbia's British Sales Manager. At Columbia during the First World War, 1914-1918, Sterling introduced the production of patriotic war songs and original cast recordings of songs from London shows. By the end of the war Sterling was the managing director of the Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd. When Columbia bought out its American parent company in 1927, Sterling was made chairman of its New York board. During the early 1930s Sterling became the managing director of Electrical and Musical Industries Ltd, (EMI), which had merged with Columbia. Sterling also served on the board of the merchant bank, S G Warburg. On leaving EMI he served as a director of the music publishers Chapell and Co and later became the managing director and then chairman of the electrical engineers, AC Cosser Ltd. Sterling established a number of charitable organisations including the Sterling Club in 1937 and the Sir Louis Sterling Charitable Trust in 1938. Later he became involved in Jewish charitable work and was President of the British Committee for Technical Development in Israel. Sterling's main interest outside business was collecting books. Although he started collecting books in 1917, the majority of the items in his collection were purchased in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1956 the collection had grown to over 5000 books and manuscripts. In 1945 Sterling approached the University of London about donating his collection to the library. Under the direction of John Hayward a team from the University Library catalogued the collection at the Sterling home. On 30 October 1956 the Sterling collection was in place in the University of London Library and formally opened. Sterling was knighted in 1937 and he received an honorary D. Litt from the University of London in 1947. Sterling died in London on 2 June 1958.
The London University Transport Studies Society existed from 1962 to 1999. The Society came into existence when the Transport Act of 1962 dismembered the British Transport Commission empire denationalising and deregulating large areas of transport. Founded in 1962 by students, lecturers and organisers of University College London Certificate Course in Transport Studies the Society recorded changes in transport over a 37 year period. Meetings, visits and seminars were conducted to complement and support the Certificate and Diploma in Transport Studies at the University of London. The Society sought and provided ongoing educational opportunities to those interested in transport and provided a forum for social contact. The first meeting was held on 19th September 1962 attended by committee members with annual subscriptions of 7 shillings and 6 pence agreed upon. A circular letter was forwarded to prospective members announcing the formation of the society and enlisting support. In 1964 the Society obtained recognition from and became a branch of the University of London Extension Association paying 2 shillings and 6 pence from membership fees to the Association. The end of the Certificate and Diploma Studies Courses in Transport Studies in 1997 and 1999 respectively created a decrease in membership forcing the Society's closure
John Henderson Grieve was born in 1770, of Scottish origin, and came originally from Perth. He worked as a scene-painter in minor London theatres and from 1794 was also employed by Richard Brinsley Sheridan at Drury Lane. By 1817, he was working in theatres in Covent Garden where he remained apart from two spells at Drury Lane from 1835 to 1839 and in the two years before his death. Thomas Grieve, the elder son of John Henderson Grieve, was trained by his father and worked with him at Covent Garden and elsewhere from 1817. From 1846 to 1859, he worked at Drury Lane, Covent Garden and at Her Majesty's Theatre, but is perhaps most notable for his leading role he played among the team of scene-painters who supplied Charles Keen's regime at the Princess' Theatre, Oxford Street, from 1850 to 1859, particularly in the Shakespearean revivals of that period. Thomas Grieve also painted famous exhibition hall panoramas with William Telbin and others, including The Overland Mail (to India) from 1852, which is perhaps his most reknowned. He died in Lambeth in April 1882. William Grieve, the younger son of John Henderson Grieve, was born in 1800 and followed the same career course as his older brother by working with his father. However, from 1833, after a family engagement at the King's Theatre (later Her Majesty's) he stayed on as head scene painter until his early death in 1844. He was famous for his moonlight scenes and was reputedly the first scenic artist to be called before the curtain to receive the applause of the audience for his contribution to Robert le Diable at the King's Theatre in 1832. Unlike his father and brother, he also won acclaim as an easel artist, exhibiting landscapes and architectural views at the Royal Academy and elsewhere in the 1830s. He died in November 1844 in Lambeth leaving a large family. Thomas Walford Grieve, the son of Thomas Grieve and the grandson of John Henderson Grieve, was born in 1841 and trained and worked with his father from around 1862. He worked at Covent Garden with him and also at the Lyceum. He never achieved the acclaim received by his father or his older contemporary William Roxby Beverley, and died (apparently of cancer) after a long illness which for some years previously had forced him to give up work.
Cecil Frederick Crofton (whose real name was Frederick Martin) was a versatile actor who appeared in a large variety of parts in the chief London theatres and the provinces, along with parts in pantomimes during the 1880s and 1890s. After considerable experience on the amateur stage, he made his first professional apearance in 1882 in Wilson Barrett's Lights o'London company at the Old Princess' Theatre. After further performances at the Royalty and the Avenue (now the Playhouse) he went on to tour the country as Charles II in Nell Gwynne, shortly after followed by appearances in The Countess and the Dancer and Camille at the Olympic in 1886. In 1889, he took the part of George Ralston in Jim the Penman at the Shaftesbury Theatre, which was also to go on tour in 1893. He took the part of Spooner in the revival of Formosa in 1891, and followed with parts in The Prince and the Pauper at the Vaudeville and Brighton at the Criterion. He played Montague Helston in Watching and Waiting, which he produced at the Vaudeville, and he was also Antony Crabb in The Custom House at the same theatre. In 1894, he went on tour in The Late Lamented, and, after appearances in The Middlemen as Epiphany Danks and in The Professor's Love Story as Dr Yellowlees, it could be said that his career effectively came to a close. Crofton died in November 1935.
Information not available at present.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
The Republic of Venice was created around 1140. It was headed by the Doge, and led by the Great Council, who controlled all political and administrative business. Ludovico Manin, the last doge, was deposed by Napoléon Bonaparte on May 12, 1797.
Samuel Pegge was born 5 November at Chesterfield, Derbyshire. He was educated at Chesterfield and St. John's College, Cambridge from where he graduated BA in 1725 and MA 1729. Pegge was ordained in 1729, became curate at Sundridge, Kent in 1730 and the vicar of Godmersham, Kent in 1731. From 1749 to 1751 he lived in Surrenden, Kent as tutor to the son of Sir Edward Dering. In 1751 he was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and in the same year he was inducted into the rectory at Brinhill, Lancashire. He remained at Brinhill until 1758, when he exchanged Brinhill for the vicarage of Heath near Whittington, which he held until his death on 14 February 1796. Pegge was also the prebendary of Lichfield from 1757 to 1796. Pegge was interested in collecting English coins and medals. He contributed articles to journals and the encyclopaedias, Archaelogia and Bibliotheca Topographca Britannica. He also published on coinage, the Anglo Saxons, and the life of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln.
The House of Commons is the effective legislative authority in Great Britain. It alone has the right to impose taxes and to vote money to, or withhold it from the monarch, public departments and services. The passage of legislation is the House of Commons' primary function.
Born, Rickmansworth, 1900, and educated at Oxford University, where he received a third class in Lit Hum. Worked with Basil Blackwell and Bernard Newdigate at the Shakespeare Head Press before setting up his own press, the Alcuin, in a barn in Chipping Campden. In 1936, Finberg's company moved to Welwyn but foundered in the slump. He then became the director of the Broadwater Press and, in 1944, the editorial director of Burnes, Oates and Washbourne. He also served in an advisory capacity to Her Majesty's Printers and the Ministry of Works; genealogical research on the Duke of Bedford's estates resulting in the publication of his Tavistock Abbey in 1949. After attending meetings of the Devon Association, Finberg struck up a friendship with W.G.Hoskins, lecturer in economic history at Leicester University and co-authored a collection of essays Devonshire Studies. Reader and Head of the Department of English Local History, Leicester University until his retirement in 1965, editing a series of Occasional Papers in Local History and using his earlier publishing experience to launch and edit the Agricultural History Review, which he edited for 11 years; also general editor of the Agrarian History of England project and President of the British Agricultural History Society between 1966 and 1968. He was appointed Professor in 1964. In retirement, Finberg was also active, becoming part-time research assistant at Leeds, working with Maurice Beresford on a handlist of medieval boroughs, and between 1968 and 1969 was a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He was a member of a committee of specialist advisors to the Vatican Council on vernacular liturgies. His Manual of Catholic Prayer (1962) was also awarded the Belgian Prix Graphica in 1965. Finberg died in November 1974.
The translator states that the translation was made and corrected from the English editions in London.
Information not available at present.
Pyott was a wine merchant of Kingston upon Hull who lost his fortune in trade speculations.
No information 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).
Sir Archibald Edmonstone was created a Baronet of Great Britain in 1774. Between the years of 1761-1795 he sat in Parliament for the county of Dumbarton and the Ayr and Irvine burghs. He died in 1807.
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.
No information available at present.
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.
After a relatively poor upbringing Lovett became interested in the social conditions of the working classes. Around 1830 he was appointed secretary to the British Association for promoting Co-operative Knowledge and during that time was also connected with agitation against stamp duty on newspapers. In 1831 he went on to join the National Union of the Working Classes. In 1836 he assisted to draft the Benefit Societies Act and to draft other People's Bills and Charters. With his collegue Collins he wrote Chartism: A New Organisation of the People in 1841. Later in his life he also became interested in educational issues, writing some educational text books. He was also involved in promoting the establishment of free libraries to parliamentarians.
Gavin Young's publications include: Observations on the law of population: being an attempt to trace its effects from the conflicting theories of Malthus and Sadler (London, 1832); Reflections on the present state of British India (London, 1829).
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.
Petrus Blomevenna (1466-1536) was born at Leyden, and was Prior of the Carthusian monastery of Cologne for 29 years. He composed several religious treatises. Robert de Croy became Bishop of Cambrai in 1519 when his brother Guillaume, who was Bishop of Cambrai and of Toledo, resigned the former office in favour of Robert. Robert died in 1556.
The English Parliament was the main legislative body of the country. William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, military commander and statesman, dominated the government of Henry VI of England. During the Hundred Years War, he was made commander in chief of the English army in France from 1428 to 1431. He secured a two-year truce in 1444, but after the reopening of hostilities in March 1449 the French recaptured almost all of Normandy. Parliament laid the blame for the disaster on Suffolk, who was banished from the realm for five years. Suffolk left England on May 1, 1450, but was intercepted in the English Channel by some of his enemies and beheaded.
John de Cobham, 3rd Baron Cobham, was impeached in 1397 for acting as a commissioner at the trial of King Richard II's favourites in 1388. He was condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered, but this sentence was commuted to perpetual banishment to Jersey. When Richard was deposed in 1399 Cobham was recalled by King Henry IV, and died in 1408.
The construction of the south pier at St Peter's Port, Guernsey, was begun in 1570. Funds for the work were obtained by means of a duty levied on the goods of strangers.
Chapman was the solicitor to the Boot and Shoe Trades Protection Society.
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.
Put forward to King Charles I in the English Parliament of 1628, the Petition of Right asserted four liberties: freedom from arbitrary arrest; freedom from non-parliamentary taxation; freedom from the billeting of troops; and freedom from martial law.
The Council of State was set up by Parliamentary ordinance on 13 February 1649 as a successor to the Derby House Committee which had taken over much of the Privy Council's executive role in the State. It was annually renewed by Parliament and insisted on choosing its own President. From May 1649 it was housed at Whitehall. Membership was reduced from 41 to 15 in 1653 when it became the Protector's Council. By 1656 it was being styled the Privy Council. After Richard Cromwell's abdication in 1659 the Council of State was revived and remodelled twice before it relapsed into a Privy Council. It spawned committees, both standing and ad hoc; the former included the Admiralty Committee, set up in 1649.
Prize goods were ships and goods captured at sea.
The Privy Council is descended from the curia regis, which was made up of the king's tenants in chief, household officials, and anyone else the king chose. This group performed all the functions of government. About the time of Edward I (reigned 1272-1307), the executive and advising duties of the Curia Regis came to be handled by a select group, the king's secret council, which later came to be called the Privy Council. This manuscript shows the attempts of King Henry V to secure the support or at least the neutrality of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, who controlled Flanders, before undertaking an invasion of France in 1415.