Wikipedia historical people entries including Ralph Allen

Ralph Allen
Born	c. 1693 St Columb Major, Cornwall, England
Died	29 June 1764 (aged 70–71) Bath, Somerset, Great Britain
Resting place	Claverton, Somerset
Occupation(s)	Postmaster, merchant and philanthropist
Known for	Reforming the British postal system

Ralph Allen (c. 1693 – 29 June 1764) was a British postmaster, merchant and philanthropist best known for his reforms to Britain's postal system. Born in St Columb Major, Cornwall, he moved to Bath, Somerset to work in the municipal post office, becoming its postmaster by 1712. Allen made the system more efficient and took over contracts for the British mail service to cover areas of England up to the Anglo-Scottish border and into South Wales.

He purchased local stone mines from his postal profits and had Prior Park built as his country house to show off the versatility of Bath stone, using the old post office as his townhouse. Working alongside architect John Wood, the Elder, the stone Allen mined was heavily used in construction work for development works in Bath. However, the mines did not consistently make a profit and he subsidised them from his postal profits.

After his death, he was buried in a pyramid-topped tomb in Claverton, Somerset. Allen is commemorated in the names of streets and schools in the city of Bath and was the model for the character of Squire Allworthy in the 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding.^[1]

Much is unknown or obscure regarding Allen's early life. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives his father as Philip Allen, reputed to be an innkeeper.^[1] As a teenager, Allen worked at the Post Office at St Columb, run by his grandmother. He moved in 1710 to Bath, where he became a post office clerk, and at the age of 19, in 1712, became the Postmaster of Bath.^[2] In 1742 he was elected Mayor of Bath.^[3]

At the age of 27, Allen took control of the Cross and Bye Posts in the South West under a seven-year contract with the General Post Office, although he had no official title.^[4] At the end of this period he had not made a profit, only breaking even,^[3] but he had the courage to continue.^[5]

Over the next few years, he reformed the postal service.^[6] He realised that post boys were delivering items of mail along their route without them being declared and that this was lost profit. He introduced a "signed for" system that prevented the malpractice.^[7] He also improved efficiency by not requiring mail to go via London.

Allen's reputation grew and he took over more and more of the English postal system, signing contracts every seven years until he died aged 71. It is estimated that he saved the Post Office £1,500,000 over a 40-year period.^[8] He won the patronage of General Wade in 1715, when he disclosed details of a Jacobite uprising in Cornwall.^[9]

With the arrival of John Wood in Bath, Allen used the wealth gained from his postal reforms to acquire the stone quarries at Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines.^[3][10] Hitherto, the quarry masons had always hewn stone roughly providing blocks of varying size. The resulting uneven surface is known as "rubble" and buildings of this type – built during the Stuart period – are visible throughout the older parts of Bath.^[11]

The distinctive honey-coloured Bath stone, used to build the Georgian city, made Allen a second fortune. The building in Lilliput Alley, Bath (now North Parade Passage), which he used as a post office, became his town house^[12] and in 1727 he refronted the southern rubble wall, extended the house to the north and added a new storey.^[13] John Wood the Elder refers to this in his "Essay towards the future of Bath". Allen was astute at marketing the qualities of Bath stone and erected an elaborately ornate building a few feet to the north of his house to demonstrate its qualities. The extension (as Wood refers to it) has become known as "Ralph Allen's Town House", though whether it was designed by Wood is unproven and many local historians consider it unlikely.^[14][15][16] Allen continued to live there until 1745, when he moved to Prior Park, and the town house became his offices.^[17]

Allen had the Palladian mansion of Prior Park built (1742) on a hill overlooking the city, "To see all Bath, and for all Bath to see".^[10] He gave money and the stone for the building of the Mineral Water Hospital in central Bath 1738.^[18] In 1758 he bought Claverton Manor, just east of Bath.^[19]

Allen had a summer home built in the coastal town of Weymouth in Dorset, overlooking the harbour at number 2 Trinity Road, opposite the Customs House.^[20] There is a plaque on the house to commemorate Allen. His Bath stone was used in the Georgian buildings of Weymouth.^[21]

After Allen died in Bath on 29 June 1764,^[22] he was buried in a pyramid-topped tomb in Claverton churchyard, on the outskirts of the city.^[23] A marble bust stood in the Mineral Water Hospital (later the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases) and was moved to the hospital's new building at Combe Park in 2019.^[24]

His name is commemorated in Ralph Allen Drive which runs past his former home at Prior Park. Now a busy road from Combe Down village to Bath city centre, this was the route by which the stone from his quarries at Combe Down was sent on wooden sledges down to the River Avon. Prior Park College, a private school for 11- to 18-year-olds, is housed in Allen's former home and incorporates a boys' boarding house named Allen House.^[25] The Prior Park Landscape Garden and Palladian bridge are cared for by the National Trust, who brought the garden back from dereliction in 1993.^[26][27] He is also remembered in Ralph Allen School, one of the city's state secondary schools.^[28]

The Ralph Allen CornerStone in Combe Down village opened in the autumn of 2013. This houses the archives of the Combe Down Heritage Society and provides a community hub and information centre as part of the legacy of the project to infill the stone mines underneath the village.^[29] Writer Henry Fielding used Allen as the model for Squire Allworthy in the 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.^[3]

• Bath Postal Museum

• Boyce, B. (1967). The benevolent man: a life of Ralph Allen of Bath.
• Erskine-Hill, Howard (1975). "'Low-Born Allen': Ralph Allen (1693–1764)". The Social Milieu of Alexander Pope.
• Davis, S. (1985). Ralph Allen: benefactor and postal reformer (Booklet). Bath Postal Museum.
• Hopkins, A. E. (ed.) (1960). Ralph Allen's own narrative, 1720–1761.
• Peach, R.E.M. (1895). The life and times of Ralph Allen. D. Nutt.

• Ralph Allen at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Allen, Ralph (1694–1764) Philanthropist at the National Register of Archives
• Prior Park Landscape Garden, National Trust

The Right Reverend William Warburton
Bishop of Gloucester
Diocese	Diocese of Gloucester
In office	1759–1779
Predecessor	James Johnson
Successor	James Yorke
Other post(s)	Dean of Bristol (1757–1760)
Personal details
Born	(1698-12-24)24 December 1698 Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England
Died	7 June 1779(1779-06-07) (aged 80) Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England
Denomination	Anglican

William Warburton (24 December 1698 – 7 June 1779) was an English writer, literary critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759 until his death. He edited editions of the works of his friend Alexander Pope, and of William Shakespeare.

Warburton was born on 24 December 1698 at Newark, Nottinghamshire, where his father, George Warburton was town clerk.^[1] He was educated at Oakham and Newark grammar schools, and in 1714, he was articled to Mr Kirke, an attorney, at East Markham. In 1719, after serving his articles he returned to Newark, where he began to practise as a solicitor,^[1] but, having studied Latin and Greek, changed his mind and was ordained deacon by the Archbishop of York in 1723.^[2] He was ordained as a priest in 1726, and in the same year began to associate with literary circles in London.^[1]

Sir Robert Sutton gave Warburton the small living of Greasley, in Nottinghamshire, exchanged next year for that of Brant Broughton in Lincolnshire. He was, in addition, rector of Firsby from 1730 until 1756, although he never lived in the village.^[2] In 1728, he was made an honorary M.A. of the University of Cambridge.^[3]

At Brant Broughton for 18 years he spent his time in study, the first result of which was his treatise on the Alliance between Church and State (1736). The book brought Warburton into favour at court, and he probably only missed immediate preferment by the death of Queen Caroline.^[2]

A series of articles defending the writings of Alexander Pope against charges of religious unorthodoxy,^[1] led to a friendship with the poet which contributed greatly to Warburton's social advancement. Pope introduced him to both William Murray, later Lord Mansfield, who obtained for him the preachership of Lincoln's Inn in 1746, and to Ralph Allen, who, in Dr Johnson's words, "gave him his niece and his estate, and, by consequence, a bishopric." Warburton married Gertrude Tucker, in September 1745,^[1] and from that time lived at Allen's estate at Prior Park, in Gloucestershire, which he eventually inherited in 1764.^[2]

He became prebendary of Gloucester in 1753, chaplain to the king in 1754, prebendary of Durham in 1755, Dean of Bristol in 1757, and Bishop of Gloucester in 1759.^[2]

By 1727 Warburton had written the notes he contributed to Lewis Theobald's edition of Shakespeare,^[2] published a Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Causes of Miracles,^[1] and contributed anonymously to a pamphlet on the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, The Legal Judicature in Chancery stated (1727). This was an answer to another anonymous pamphlet, written by Philip Yorke, later Lord Chancellor.^[2]

After Alliance between Church and State, his next and best-known work, Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist (1738–41, in two volumes), preserves his name as the author of the most daring and ingenious of theological paradoxes. The deists had made the absence of any inculcation of the doctrine of a future life an objection to the divine authority of the Mosaic writings. Warburton boldly admitted the fact and turned it against the adversary by maintaining that no merely human legislator would have omitted such a sanction of morality. Warburton's extraordinary power, learning and originality were acknowledged on all sides, though he excited censure and suspicion by his tenderness to the alleged heresies of Conyers Middleton. The book aroused much controversy. In a pamphlet of "Remarks" (1742), he replied to John Tillard, and Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections (1744–45) was an answer to Akenside, Conyers Middleton (who had been his friend), Richard Pococke, Nicholas Mann, Richard Grey, Henry Stebbing and other critics. As he characterised his opponents in general as the "pestilent herd of libertine scribblers with which the island is overrun," it is no surprise that the publication of the book created many bitter enemies.^[2]

Either in quest of paradox, or unable to recognise the real tendencies of Alexander Pope's Essay on Man, Warburton defended it against the Examen of Jean Pierre de Crousaz through a series of articles he contributed to The Works of the Learned in 1738–9. Whether Pope had really understood the tendency of his own work has always been doubtful, but there is no question that he was glad of an apologist, and that in the long run Warburton's jeu d'esprit helped Pope more than all his erudition. This led to a sincere friendship between the two men, with Pope fostering Warburton as a literary collaborator and editor. As part of this effort, in a 1743 edition of the Dunciad published under Warburton's editorship, Pope persuaded Warburton to add a fourth book, and encouraged the substitution of Colley Cibber for Theobald as the "hero" of the poem. On his death in 1744, Pope's will bequeathed half of his library to Warburton, as well as the copyright to all his printed works. Warburton would subsequently publish a full edition of Pope's writings in 1751.^[2]

In 1747 his edition of Shakespeare was published, incorporating material from Pope's earlier edition. He had previously entrusted notes and emendations on Shakespeare to Sir Thomas Hanmer, whose unauthorised use of them led to a heated controversy. He also accused Lewis Theobald, with whom he had corresponded on Shakespearean subjects as early as 1727, of stealing his ideas, and denied his critical ability.^[2]

Warburton was further kept busy by replying to the attacks on his Divine Legation from all quarters, by a dispute with Bolingbroke respecting Pope's behaviour in the affair of Bolingbroke's Patriot King, and by a vindication in 1750 of the alleged miraculous interruption of the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem undertaken by Julian, in answer to Conyers Middleton. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, "Warburton's manner of dealing with opponents was both insolent and rancorous, but it did him no disservice."^[2]

He continued to write for as long as the infirmities of age allowed, collecting and publishing his sermons, and attempting to complete the Divine Legation, further fragments of which were published with his posthumous Works. He wrote a defence of revealed religion in his View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy (1754), and Hume's Natural History of Religion called forth some Remarks ... by a gentleman of Cambridge (1757) from Warburton, in which his friend and biographer, Richard Hurd, had a share.^[2]

In 1762 he launched a vigorous attack on Methodism under the title of The Doctrine of Grace. He also engaged in a keen controversy with Robert Lowth, later bishop of London, on the book of Job, in which Lowth brought home charges of lack of scholarship and of insolence that admitted of no denial. His last important act was to found in 1768 the Warburtonian lecture at Lincoln's Inn, "to prove the truth of revealed religion ... from the completion of the prophecies of the Old and New Testament which relate to the Christian Church, especially to the apostasy of Papal Rome."^[4]

Warburton died at Gloucester on 7 June 1779. He left no children, his only son having predeceased him.^[1] In 1781 his widow, Gertrude, married^[1] the Rev. Martin Stafford Smith.^[5]

His works were edited in seven volumes (1788) by Richard Hurd with a biographical preface, and the correspondence between the two friends—an important contribution to the literary history of the period—was edited by Samuel Parr in 1808. Warburton's life was also written by John Selby Watson in 1863, and Mark Pattison made him the subject of an essay in 1889.^[6]

Coat of arms of William Warburton

Notes Impaled with the arms of the Diocese of Gloucester. Escutcheon Argent a chevron between three cormorants Sable a canton Gules.[7]

• List of abolitionist forerunners
• Shakespeare's editors

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Warburton, William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 318–319.
• Stephen, Leslie (1899). "Warburton, William" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 59. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Young, B. W. "Warburton, William (1698–1779)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28680. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

• Works by William Warburton at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Warburton at the Internet Archive
• Bibliographic directory from Project Canterbury
• Works by William Warburton at Post-Reformation Digital Library
• Faith working by charity to Christian edification. A sermon preach'd at the last episcopal visitation for confirmation, in the diocese of Lincoln (MDCCXXXVIII)
• The nature of national offences truly stated : and the peculiar case of the Jewish people rightly explained : shewing that Great Britain ... may reasonably aspire to the distinguished protection of heaven (1746)
• A Critical and Philosophical Enquiry Into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles, as Related by Historians: With an Essay Towards Restoring a Method and Purity in History (1727)

Francis Thomas-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Earl of Kerry (9 September 1740 – 4 July 1818) was an Irish peer. He was the heir to a great inheritance, but his extravagance led to the loss of all his Irish estates.

He was the only son of William Fitzmaurice, 2nd Earl of Kerry, and Lady Gertrude Lambart, daughter of Richard Lambart, 4th Earl of Cavan and Margaret Trant. His father died when he was only seven and he became a Ward in Chancery. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin where he took his degree of Bachelor in Arts in 1758 and Master in Arts in 1759.

In 1768 he married Anastasia Daly, younger daughter and co-heiress of Peter Daly of Queensbury, County Galway. She obtained a divorce by Act of Parliament from her first husband (who was also her cousin), Charles Daly of Loughrea, in order to marry Lord Kerry. The Kerry marriage caused much comment, most of it adverse: apart from the decision to divorce her previous husband, a step which was still felt by many in polite society to be scandalous, Anastasia was much older than her husband, socially she was not his equal, and she was a Roman Catholic. Like her husband she was extravagant, and she was blamed by his family for her husband's disastrous financial losses. Nonetheless, the inscription which he had placed on her tomb in Westminster Abbey makes it clear that he never regretted marrying her: it states that for 31 years she made him the happiest of mankind, due to her "charity, benevolence, truth, sincerity, meekness and simplicity".

Others who knew the couple took a more jaundiced view: Horace Walpole called Lord Kerry "a simple young Irish peer that has married an elderly Irishwoman, who was divorced on his account, and wasted a vast estate on the idlest ostentation". The Earl's cousin, whose son was his heir, William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne wrote uncharitably that "he fell in love with a married lady twenty years older than himself, the daughter of an eminent Roman Catholic lawyer, and she having obtained a divorce, married her; [she was] an extraordinarily vain person. Having their way to fight up into good society, and having no children, they sold every acre of land that had been in our family since Henry II's time".

Lady Kerry died on 9 April 1799. Her husband died in 1818 and was buried in the same tomb in Westminster Abbey. He had no children and the title became an additional title of the Marquess of Lansdowne, descendants of his uncle John Petty, 1st Earl of Shelburne.

• Cokayne Complete Peerage 13 volumes (1910-1959) Reprinted Gloucester 2000 Vol VII, p. 215
• Collins, Arthur Peerage of England 12 volumes London 1812 Vol. II, p. 437
• National University of Ireland Galway Landed Estates Database Estate: Fitzmaurice (Earl of Kerry)

Thomas Maude, 1st Baron de Montalt (c. 1727 – 17 May 1777) was an Anglo-Irish politician.^[1]

Montalt was the son of Sir Robert Maude, 1st Baronet and Eleanor Cornwallis, daughter of Thomas Cornwallis and Emma Charlton. He succeeded to his father's baronetcy on 4 August 1750. He was elected to the Irish House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for County Tipperary in 1761 and sat until 1776. In 1765 Montalt held the office of High Sheriff of Tipperary and was invested as a member of the Privy Council of Ireland in 1768. On 18 July 1776 he was created Baron de Montalt of Hawarden in the Peerage of Ireland.^[1]

He never married and upon his death his barony became extinct.^[1] His estate and baronetcy were inherited by his younger brother, Cornwallis Maude, 1st Viscount Hawarden.

Viscount Hawarden
Quarterly: 1st and 4th, Azure a Lion rampant Argent (Maude); 2nd and 3rd, Argent three Bars Gemelles Sable over all a Lion rampant Gules charged on the shoulder with a Cross Crosslet fitchée Or
Creation date	5 December 1793
Created by	George III
Peerage	Peerage of Ireland
First holder	Sir Cornwallis Maude, 3rd Baronet
Present holder	Robert Connan Wyndham Leslie Maude, 9th Viscount Hawarden
Heir apparent	Hon. Varian Maude
Subsidiary titles	Baron de Montalt Maude Baronetcy of Dundrum, County Tipperary
Status	Extant
Seat(s)	Great Bossington Farm, Kent
Former seat(s)	Dundrum House
Motto	Virtute Securus (Safety by manliness)[1]

Viscount Hawarden is a title in the Peerage of Ireland.

It was created in 1793 for Sir Cornwallis Maude, 3rd Baronet, who had earlier represented the borough of Roscommon in the Irish House of Commons. He had succeeded his older brother, Sir Thomas, as third Baronet of Dundrum. He married Mary, a niece of Ralph Allen, through whom lands in Combe Down, Somerset, came into his family. His son, the third Viscount, sat in the House of Lords as an Irish representative peer from 1836 to 1850. His son, the fourth Viscount, was an Irish Representative Peer from 1862 to 1886 and served as a government whip from 1866 to 1868 and from 1874 to 1880 in the Conservative administrations of the Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli. In 1886 the fourth Viscount was created Earl de Montalt, of Dundrum in the County of Tipperary, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. However, this title became extinct on his death in 1905 while he was succeeded in his other titles by his cousin, the fifth Viscount. He was the eldest son of the Very Reverend the Hon. Robert William Henry Maude, second son of the first Viscount. His son, the sixth Viscount, was killed at an early age in France during the First World War while serving as a lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards^[2] and was succeeded by his cousin, the seventh Viscount.^[3] He was the son of Ludlow Eustace Maude, younger son of the aforementioned Robert William Henry Maude. As of 2010 the titles are held by the latter's grandson, the ninth Viscount, who succeeded his father in 1991.

The Maude Baronetcy, of Dundrum in the County of Tipperary, was created in the Baronetage of Ireland on 9 May 1705 for the first Viscount's father Robert Maude. He represented Gowran, Canice and Bangor in the Irish House of Commons. His eldest son, the second Baronet, sat as a Member of the Irish Parliament for County Tipperary. In 1776 he was created Baron de Montalt, of Hawarden in the County of Tipperary, in the Peerage of Ireland. However, this title became extinct on his death in 1777 while he was succeeded in the baronetcy by his younger brother, the aforementioned third Baronet, for whom the barony was revived in 1785.

The family seat is Great Bossington Farm, near Adisham, Kent.

The former was Dundrum House, an eighteenth-century Palladian house in the style of Sir Edward Lovett Pearce,^[4] near Cashel, County Tipperary. An extra storey was added to the house c.1890 by 4th Viscount Hawarden. After being sold by the Maude family in 1908, the house became a convent. It later became a hotel, in 1981.

• Sir Robert Maude, 1st Baronet (died 1750)
• Sir Thomas Maude, 2nd Baronet (1727–1777) (created Baron de Montalt in 1776)

• Thomas Maude, 1st Baron de Montalt (1727–1777)

• Sir Cornwallis Maude, 3rd Baronet (1729–1803) (created Viscount Hawarden in 1793)

• Cornwallis Maude, 1st Viscount Hawarden (1729–1803)
• Thomas Ralph Maude, 2nd Viscount Hawarden (1767–1807)
• Cornwallis Maude, 3rd Viscount Hawarden (1780–1856)
• Cornwallis Maude, 4th Viscount Hawarden (1817–1905) (created Earl de Montalt in 1886)

• Cornwallis Maude, 1st Earl de Montalt (1817–1905)

• Robert Henry Maude, 5th Viscount Hawarden (1842–1908)
• Robert Cornwallis Maude, 6th Viscount Hawarden (1890–1914)
• Eustace Wyndham Maude, 7th Viscount Hawarden (1877–1958)
• Robert Leslie Eustace Maude, 8th Viscount Hawarden (1926–1991)
• Robert Connan Wyndham Leslie Maude, 9th Viscount Hawarden (born 1961)

The heir apparent is the present viscount's son, Hon. Varian John Connon Eustace Maude (born 1997)^[5]

• Hesilrige, Arthur G. M. (1921). Debrett's Peerage and Titles of courtesy. 160A, Fleet street, London, UK: Dean & Son. p. 458.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
• Morris, Susan (20 April 2020). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage 2019. Debrett's; eBook Partnership. ISBN 9781999767051. John Debrett {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help) ^{[page needed]}
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages ^{[self-published source] [better source needed]}

Cornwallis Maude, 1st Viscount Hawarden (19 September 1729 – 23 August 1803) was an Anglo-Irish peer and politician.^[1]

Hawarden was the second son of Sir Robert Maude, 1st Baronet and his wife, Eleanor Cornwallis, daughter of Thomas Cornwallis and Emma Charlton.^[1]

Hawarden succeeded to the baronetcy following the death of his unmarried older brother, Thomas Maude, 1st Baron de Montalt, in 1777. He served as the Member of Parliament for Roscommon in the Irish House of Commons between 1783 and 1785. He was created Baron de Montalt of Hawarden in the Peerage of Ireland on 29 June 1785. He was further honoured when he was created Viscount Hawarden, also in the Peerage of Ireland, on 5 December 1793.^[1]

He had 16 children with three wives.^[1]

Cornwallis Maude, 3rd Viscount Hawarden (28 March 1780 – 12 October 1856) was a British Conservative politician.

Hawarden was the son of Cornwallis Maude, 1st Viscount Hawarden, by his second wife Anne Isabella (née Monck), and succeeded his half-brother in the viscountcy in 1807. In 1836 he was elected an Irish representative peer and took his seat on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords. He served as a Lord-in-waiting (government whip in the House of Lords) under Sir Robert Peel from 1841 to 1846 and under the Earl of Derby in 1852.

Lord Hawarden married Jane, daughter of Patrick Crawford Bruce, in 1811. She died in 1852. Hawarden survived her by four years and died in October 1856, aged 76. He was succeeded in the viscountcy by his only son Cornwallis, who was created Earl de Montalt in 1886.

• Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990.
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages ^{[self-published source] [better source needed]}
• Lundy, Darryl. "FAQ". The Peerage.^{[unreliable source]}

Lancelot "Capability" Brown
Portrait of Capability Brown by Nathaniel Dance, 1769
Born	Lancelot Brown Kirkharle, Northumberland, England
Baptised	30 August 1716
Died	6 February 1783(1783-02-06) (aged 67–68) London, England
Occupations	Gardener Landscape architect
Spouse	Bridget Wayet ​ (m. 1744)​
Children	8

Lancelot "Capability" Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783)^[1] was an English gardener and landscape architect, a notable figure in the history of the English landscape garden style.

Unlike other architects including William Kent, he was a hands-on gardener and provided his clients with a full turnkey service, designing the gardens and park, and then managing their landscaping and planting. He is most famous for the landscaped parks of English country houses, many of which have survived reasonably intact. However, he also included in his plans "pleasure gardens" with flower gardens and the new shrubberies, usually placed where they would not obstruct the views across the park of and from the main facades of the house. Few of his plantings of "pleasure gardens" have survived later changes. He also submitted plans for much smaller urban projects, for example the college gardens along The Backs at Cambridge.

Criticism of his style, both in his own day and subsequently, mostly centres on the claim that "he created 'identikit' landscapes with the main house in a sea of turf, some water, albeit often an impressive feature, and trees in clumps and shelterbelts", giving "a uniformity equating to authoritarianism" and showing a lack of imagination and even taste on the part of his patrons.^[2]

He designed more than 170 parks, many of which survive. He was nicknamed "Capability" because he would tell his clients that their property had "capability" for improvement.^[3] His influence was so great that the contributions to the English garden made by his predecessors Charles Bridgeman and William Kent are often overlooked; even Kent's champion Horace Walpole allowed that Kent "was succeeded by a very able master".^[4]

Lancelot Brown was the fifth child of a land agent and a chambermaid, born in the village of Kirkharle, Northumberland, and educated at a school in Cambo until he was 16. Brown's father, William Brown, had been Sir William Loraine’s land agent and his mother, Ursula (née Hall^[5]), had been in service at Kirkharle Hall. His eldest brother, John, became the estate surveyor and later married Sir William's daughter. His older brother George became a mason-architect.

After school Lancelot worked as the head gardener's apprentice at Sir William Loraine's kitchen garden at Kirkharle Hall until he was 23. In 1739 he journeyed south to the port of Boston, Lincolnshire.^[6] Then he moved further inland, where his first landscape commission was for a new lake in the park at Kiddington Hall, Oxfordshire.^[7] He moved to Wotton Underwood House, Buckinghamshire, seat of Sir Richard Grenville.^[8]

In 1741^[9] Brown joined Lord Cobham's gardening staff as undergardener at Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire,^[1] where he worked under William Kent, one of the founders of the new English style of landscape garden. In 1742, at the age of 26, he was officially appointed Head Gardener, earning £25 (equivalent to £4,900 in 2023) a year and residing in the western Boycott Pavilion.

Brown remained at Stowe until 1750. He made the Grecian Valley at Stowe under William Kent's supervision. It is an abstract composition of landform and woodland. Lord Cobham let Brown take freelance work from his aristocratic friends, thus making him well known as a landscape gardener. As a proponent of the new English style, Brown became immensely sought after by the landed families. By 1751, when Brown was beginning to be widely known, Horace Walpole wrote somewhat slightingly of Brown's work at Warwick Castle:

The castle is enchanting; the view pleased me more than I can express, the River Avon tumbles down a cascade at the foot of it. It is well laid out by one Brown who has set up on a few ideas of Kent and Mr. Southcote.

By the 1760s he was earning on average £6,000 (equivalent to £1,036,000 in 2023) a year, usually £500 (equivalent to £86,300 in 2023) for one commission. As an accomplished rider he was able to work fast, taking only an hour or so on horseback to survey an estate and rough out an entire design. In 1764, Brown was appointed George III's Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace, succeeding John Greening and residing at the Wilderness House.^[8] In 1767 he bought an estate for himself at Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire from Spencer Compton, 8th Earl of Northampton and was appointed High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire for 1770, although his son Lance carried out most of the duties.^[10]

It is estimated that Brown was responsible for more than 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain. His work endures at Belvoir Castle, Croome Court (where he also designed the house), Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle, Harewood House, Chatsworth, Highclere Castle, Appuldurcombe House, Milton Abbey (and nearby Milton Abbas village) and in traces at Kew Gardens and many other locations.^[11][12]

His style of smooth undulating grass, which would run straight to the house, clumps, belts and scatterings of trees and his serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers were a new style within the English landscape, a 'gardenless' form of landscape gardening, which swept away almost all the remnants of previous formally patterned styles.

His landscapes were at the forefront of fashion. They were fundamentally different from what they replaced, the well-known formal gardens of England which were criticised by Alexander Pope and others from the 1710s. Starting in 1719, William Kent replaced these with more naturalistic compositions, which reached their greatest refinement in Brown's landscapes.

At Hampton Court Brown encountered Hannah More in 1782 and she described his "grammatical" manner in her literary terms: "'Now there' said he, pointing his finger, 'I make a comma, and there' pointing to another spot, 'where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis; now a full stop, and then I begin another subject.'"^[13] Brown's patrons saw the idealised landscapes he was creating for them in terms of the Italian landscape painters they admired and collected, as Kenneth Woodbridge first observed in the landscape at Stourhead, a "Brownian" landscape (with an un-Brownian circuit walk) in which Brown himself was not involved.

Perhaps Brown's sternest critic was his contemporary Uvedale Price, who likened Brown's clumps of trees to "so many puddings turned out of one common mould."^[14] Russell Page, who began his career in the Brownian landscape of Longleat but whose own designs have formal structure, accused Brown of "encouraging his wealthy clients to tear out their splendid formal gardens and replace them with his facile compositions of grass, tree clumps and rather shapeless pools and lakes."^[15]

Richard Owen Cambridge, the English poet and satirical author, declared that he hoped to die before Brown so that he could "see heaven before it was 'improved'." This was a typical statement reflecting the controversy about Brown's work, which has continued over the last 200 years. By contrast, a recent historian and author, Richard Bisgrove, described Brown's process as perfecting nature by "judicious manipulation of its components, adding a tree here or a concealed head of water there. His art attended to the formal potential of ground, water, trees and so gave to English landscape its ideal forms. The difficulty was that less capable imitators and less sophisticated spectators did not see nature perfected... they saw simply what they took to be nature."^{[citation needed]}

This deftness of touch was recognised in his own day; one anonymous obituary writer opined: "Such, however, was the effect of his genius that when he was the happiest man, he will be least remembered; so closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken."^{[citation needed]} In 1772, Sir William Chambers (though he did not mention Brown by name) complained that the "new manner" of gardens "differ very little from common fields, so closely is vulgar nature copied in most of them."^[16]

Capability Brown produced more than 100 architectural drawings,^[17] and his work in the field of architecture was a natural outgrowth of his unified picture of the English country house in its setting:

"In Brown's hands the house, which before had dominated the estate, became an integral part of a carefully composed landscape intended to be seen through the eye of a painter, and its design could not be divorced from that of the garden"^[7]

Humphry Repton observed that Brown "fancied himself an architect",^[18] but Brown's work as an architect is overshadowed by his great reputation as a designer of landscapes. Repton was bound to add: "he was inferior to none in what related to the comfort, convenience, taste and propriety of design, in the several mansions and other buildings which he planned". Brown's first country house project was the remodelling of Croome Court, Worcestershire, (1751–52) for the 6th Earl of Coventry, in which instance he was likely following sketches by the gentleman amateur Sanderson Miller.^[7]

Fisherwick, Staffordshire, Redgrave Hall, Suffolk, and Claremont, Surrey, were classical, while at Corsham his outbuildings are in a Gothic vein, including the bathhouse. Gothic stable blocks and decorative outbuildings, arches and garden features constituted many of his designs. From 1771 he was assisted in the technical aspects by the master builder Henry Holland, and by Henry's son Henry Holland the architect, whose initial career Brown supported; the younger Holland was increasingly Brown's full collaborator and became Brown's son-in-law in 1773.

Brown's reputation declined rapidly after his death, because the English landscape style did not convey the dramatic conflict and awesome power of wild nature. A reaction against the harmony and calmness of Brown's landscapes was inevitable; the landscapes lacked the sublime thrill which members of the Romantic generation (such as Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price) looked for in their ideal landscape, where the painterly inspiration would come from Salvator Rosa rather than Claude Lorrain.

During the 19th century he was widely criticised,^[19] but during the twentieth century his reputation rose again. Tom Turner has suggested that the latter resulted from a favourable account of his talent in Marie-Luise Gothein's History of Garden Art^[20] which predated Christopher Hussey's positive account of Brown in The Picturesque (1927). Dorothy Stroud wrote the first full monograph on Capability Brown, fleshing out the generic attributions with documentation from country house estate offices.

Later landscape architects like William Sawrey Gilpin would opine that Brown's 'natural curves' were as artificial as the straight lines that were common in French gardens.^[21] Brown's portrait by Nathaniel Dance, c. 1773, is conserved in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His work has often been favourably compared and contrasted ("the antithesis") to the œuvre of André Le Nôtre, the French jardin à la française landscape architect.^[1][22] He became both "rich and honoured and had 'improved' a greater acreage of ground than any landscape architect" who preceded him.^[1][21]

A festival to celebrate the tercentenary of Brown's birth was held in 2016. The Capability Brown Festival 2016^{[usurped][23]} published a large amount of new research on Brown's work^[24] and held over 500 events across Britain as part of the celebrations.^[25] Royal Mail issued a series of Landscape Stamps^[26] in his honour in August 2016.

The Gardens Trust with support from Historic England, published Vulnerability Brown: Capability Brown landscapes at risk^[27] in October 2017 to review the issues facing the survival of these landscapes as well as suggested solutions.

A commemorative fountain in Westminster Abbey’s cloister garth was dedicated for Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown after Evensong on Tuesday 29 May 2018 by the Dean of Westminster, Dr John Hall. The fountain sits over an old monastic well in the garth. It was designed by Ptolemy Dean, the Abbey's Surveyor of the Fabric, and was developed with the assistance of gardener Alan Titchmarsh. The fountain was made in lead by sculptor Brian Turner.^[28]

On 22 November 1744 he married Bridget Wayet (affectionately called Biddy) from Boston, Lincolnshire, in Stowe parish church.^[29] Her father was an alderman and landowner while her family had surveyors and engineers among its members. They had eight children: Bridget in 1746, Lancelot (known as Lance), William (who died young), John in 1751, a son in 1754 who died shortly afterwards, Anne who was born and died in 1756, Margaret (known as Peggy) in 1758 and Thomas in 1761.^[30]

In 1768 he purchased the manor of Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire in East Anglia for £13,000 (equivalent to £2,180,000 in 2023) from Lord Northampton. This came with two manor houses, two villages and 2,668 acres of land.^[31] The property stayed in the family until it was sold in lots in 1870s and 1880s. Ownership of the property allowed him to stand for and serve as High sheriff of Huntingdonshire from 1770 to 1771.^[32] He continued to work and travel until his sudden collapse and death on 6 February 1783, on the doorstep of his daughter Bridget Holland's house, at 6 Hertford Street, London while returning after a night out at Lord Coventry's.^[33]

Horace Walpole wrote to Lady Ossory: "Your dryads must go into black gloves, Madam, their father-in-law, Lady Nature’s second husband, is dead!".^[34] Brown was buried in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul, the parish church of Brown's small estate at Fenstanton Manor.^[35] He left an estate of approximately £40,000 (equivalent to £6,080,000 in 2023), which included property in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire.^[36] His eldest daughter Bridget married the architect Henry Holland. Brown sent two of his sons to Eton. One of them, Lancelot Brown the younger, became the MP for Huntingdon. His son John joined the Royal Navy and rose to become an admiral.

Many of Capability Brown's parks and gardens may still be visited today. A partial list of the landscapes he designed or worked on includes:

More than 30 of the gardens are open to the public.^[44]

• Ha-ha
• Landscape architecture

• Brown, Jane (2011), The Omnipotent Magician: Lancelot "Capability" Brown, 1716–1783, London: Chatto & Windus, ISBN 978-0-7011-8212-0 ISBN 978-0-7011-8212-0.
• Colvin, Howard (1995) [1954], A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 (3rd ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 1264, ISBN 978-0-300-06091-1
• Colvin, Howard (2008) [1954], A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 (4th ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-12508-5
• Hinde, Thomas (1987), Capability Brown: The Story of a Master Gardener, New York: W. W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-02421-0 ISBN 0-09-163740-6.
• Stroud, Dorothy (1975) [1950], Capability Brown (2nd revised ed.), London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-10267-0 ISBN 0-571-13405-X.
• Rutherford, Sarah (2016). Capability Brown and His Landscape Gardens (Hardback). London: National Trust Books. ISBN 978-1-909-88154-9.
• Turner, Roger (1985), Capability Brown and the Eighteenth Century English Landscape, New York: Rizzoli, ISBN 0-8478-0643-X 2nd edition, Phillimore, Chichester (1999) ISBN 0-297-78734-9, ISBN 1-86077-114-9.
• Wickham, Louise, Gardens in History: A Political Perspective, 2012, Windgather Press, ISBN 1905119437, Amazon preview

Media related to Capability Brown at Wikimedia Commons

• "Lancelot Brown". Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2007. Retrieved 12 March 2012.
• "Capability Brown — 300 years". capabilitybrown.org.uk. Retrieved 27 November 2014.
• Britten, Nick (19 February 2009). "Capability Brown's first garden plan to be brought to life after 250 years". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
• "Archival material relating to Capability Brown". UK National Archives.
• Portraits of Capability Brown at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• ‘The Account Book of Lancelot Brown ‘Capability’ Brown’. Digitised copy on the RHS Digital Collections website
• FT review of Compton Verney 2011 exhibition
• Capability Brown's unfinished garden
• "Capability Brown Statue by Laury Dizengremel, 2017" (Map). Google Maps.

Alexander Pope
Portrait by Michael Dahl, c. 1727
Born	(1688-05-21)21 May 1688 O.S. London, England
Died	30 May 1744(1744-05-30) (aged 56) Twickenham, Middlesex, England
Resting place	St Mary's Church, Twickenham, Middlesex, England
Occupation	Poet, writer, translator
Genre	Poetry, satire, translation
Literary movement	Classicism, Augustan literature
Notable works	The Dunciad, The Rape of the Lock, An Essay on Criticism, his translation of Homer
Signature

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S.^[1] – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature,^[2] Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translations of Homer.

Pope is often quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having entered common parlance (e.g. "damning with faint praise" or "to err is human; to forgive, divine").

Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 during the year of the Glorious Revolution. His father (Alexander Pope, 1646–1717) was a successful linen merchant in the Strand, London. His mother, Edith (née Turner, 1643–1733), was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York. Both parents were Catholics.^[3] His uncle-in-law was the miniature painter Samuel Cooper, through his mother's sister, Christiana. Pope's education was affected by the recently enacted Test Acts, a series of English penal laws that upheld the status of the established Church of England, banning Catholics from teaching, attending a university, voting, and holding public office on penalty of perpetual imprisonment. Pope was taught to read by his aunt and attended Twyford School circa 1698.^[3] He also attended two Roman Catholic schools in London.^[3] Such schools, though still illegal, were tolerated in some areas.^[4]

In 1700 his family moved to a small estate at Popeswood, in Binfield, Berkshire, close to the royal Windsor Forest.^[3] This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing "Papists" from living within 10 miles (16 km) of London or Westminster.^[5] Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest.^[6] Pope's formal education ended at this time, and from then on, he mostly educated himself by reading the works of classical writers such as the satirists Horace and Juvenal, the epic poets Homer and Virgil, as well as English authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and John Dryden.^[3] He studied many languages, reading works by French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from London literary society such as William Congreve, Samuel Garth and William Trumbull.^[3][4]

At Binfield he made many important friends. One of them, John Caryll (the future dedicatee of The Rape of the Lock), was twenty years older than the poet and had made many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh, a minor poet, who helped Pope revise his first major work, The Pastorals. There, he met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha (Patty), in 1707. He remained close friends with Patty until his death, but his friendship with Teresa ended in 1722.^[7]

From the age of 12 he suffered numerous health problems, including Pott disease, a form of tuberculosis that affects the spine, which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback. His tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain.^[3] He grew to a height of only 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 metres). Pope was already removed from society as a Catholic, and his poor health alienated him further. Although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It has been alleged that his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover.^{[4][8][9][10]} His friend William Cheselden said, according to Joseph Spence, "I could give a more particular account of Mr. Pope's health than perhaps any man. Cibber's slander (of carnosity) is false. He had been gay [happy], but left that way of life upon his acquaintance with Mrs. B."^[11]

In May 1709, Pope's Pastorals was published in the sixth part of bookseller Jacob Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies. This earned Pope instant fame and was followed by An Essay on Criticism, published in May 1711, which was equally well received.

Around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot, who together formed the satirical Scriblerus Club. Its aim was to satirise ignorance and pedantry through the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus. He also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. In March 1713, Windsor Forest^[6] was published to great acclaim.^[4]

During Pope's friendship with Joseph Addison, he contributed to Addison's play Cato, as well as writing for The Guardian and The Spectator. Around this time, he began the work of translating the Iliad, which was a painstaking process – publication began in 1715 and did not end until 1720.^[4]

In 1714 the political situation worsened with the death of Queen Anne and the disputed succession between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites, leading to the Jacobite rising of 1715. Though Pope, as a Catholic, might have been expected to have supported the Jacobites because of his religious and political affiliations, according to Maynard Mack, "where Pope himself stood on these matters can probably never be confidently known". These events led to an immediate downturn in the fortunes of the Tories, and Pope's friend Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, fled to France. This was added to by the Impeachment of the former Tory Chief Minister Lord Oxford.

Pope lived in his parents' house in Mawson Row, Chiswick, between 1716 and 1719; the red-brick building is now the Mawson Arms, commemorating him with a blue plaque.^[12]

The money made from his translation of Homer allowed Pope to move in 1719 to a villa at Twickenham, where he created his now-famous grotto and gardens. The serendipitous discovery of a spring during the excavation of the subterranean retreat enabled it to be filled with the relaxing sound of trickling water, which would quietly echo around the chambers. Pope was said to have remarked, "Were it to have nymphs as well – it would be complete in everything." Although the house and gardens have long since been demolished, much of the grotto survives beneath Radnor House Independent Co-educational School.^[8][13] The grotto has been restored and will open to the public for 30 weekends a year from 2023 under the auspices of Pope's Grotto Preservation Trust.^[14]

An Essay on Criticism was first published anonymously on 15 May 1711. Pope began writing the poem early in his career and took about three years to finish it.

At the time the poem was published, its heroic couplet style was quite a new poetic form and Pope's work an ambitious attempt to identify and refine his own positions as a poet and critic. It was said to be a response to an ongoing debate on the question of whether poetry should be natural, or written according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from the classical past.^[15]

The "essay" begins with a discussion of the standard rules that govern poetry, by which a critic passes judgement. Pope comments on the classical authors who dealt with such standards and the authority he believed should be accredited to them. He discusses the laws to which a critic should adhere while analysing poetry, pointing out the important function critics perform in aiding poets with their works, as opposed to simply attacking them.^[16] The final section of An Essay on Criticism discusses the moral qualities and virtues inherent in an ideal critic, whom Pope claims is also the ideal man.

Pope's most famous poem is The Rape of the Lock, first published in 1712, with a revised version in 1714. A mock-epic, it satirises a high-society quarrel between Arabella Fermor (the "Belinda" of the poem) and Lord Petre, who had snipped a lock of hair from her head without permission. The satirical style is tempered, however, by a genuine, almost voyeuristic interest in the "beau-monde" (fashionable world) of 18th-century society.^[17] The revised, extended version of the poem focuses more clearly on its true subject: the onset of acquisitive individualism and a society of conspicuous consumers. In the poem, purchased artefacts displace human agency and "trivial things" come to dominate.^[18]

Though The Dunciad first appeared anonymously in Dublin, its authorship was not in doubt. Pope pilloried a host of other "hacks", "scribblers" and "dunces" in addition to Theobald, and Maynard Mack has accordingly called its publication "in many ways the greatest act of folly in Pope's life". Though a masterpiece due to having become "one of the most challenging and distinctive works in the history of English poetry", writes Mack, "it bore bitter fruit. It brought the poet in his own time the hostility of its victims and their sympathizers, who pursued him implacably from then on with a few damaging truths and a host of slanders and lies."^[19]

According to his half-sister Magdalen Rackett, some of Pope's targets were so enraged by The Dunciad that they threatened him physically. "My brother does not seem to know what fear is," she told Joseph Spence, explaining that Pope loved to walk alone, so went accompanied by his Great Dane Bounce, and for some time carried pistols in his pocket.^[20] This first Dunciad, along with John Gay's The Beggar's Opera and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, joined in a concerted propaganda assault against Robert Walpole's Whig ministry and the financial revolution it stabilised. Although Pope was a keen participant in the stock and money markets, he never missed a chance to satirise the personal, social and political effects of the new scheme of things. From The Rape of the Lock onwards, these satirical themes appear constantly in his work.

In 1731, Pope published his "Epistle to Burlington", on the subject of architecture, the first of four poems later grouped as the Moral Essays (1731–1735).^[21] The epistle ridicules the bad taste of the aristocrat "Timon".^[22] For example, the following are verses 99 and 100 of the Epistle:

At Timon's Villa let us paſs a day,
Where all cry out, "What ſums are thrown away!"^[22]

Pope's foes claimed he was attacking the Duke of Chandos and his estate, Cannons. Though the charge was untrue, it did much damage to Pope.^{[citation needed]}

There has been some speculation on a feud between Pope and Thomas Hearne, due in part to the character of Wormius in The Dunciad, who is seemingly based on Hearne.^[23]

An Essay on Man is a philosophical poem in heroic couplets published between 1732 and 1734. Pope meant it as the centrepiece of a proposed system of ethics to be put forth in poetic form. It was a piece that he sought to make into a larger work, but he did not live to complete it.^[24] It attempts to "vindicate the ways of God to Man", a variation on Milton's attempt in Paradise Lost to "justify the ways of God to Man" (1.26). It challenges as prideful an anthropocentric worldview. The poem is not solely Christian, however. It assumes that man has fallen and must seek his own salvation.^[24]

Consisting of four epistles addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, it presents an idea of Pope's view of the Universe: no matter how imperfect, complex, inscrutable and disturbing the Universe may be, it functions in a rational fashion according to natural laws, so that the Universe as a whole is a perfect work of God, though to humans it appears to be evil and imperfect in many ways. Pope ascribes this to our limited mindset and intellectual capacity. He argues that humans must accept their position in the "Great Chain of Being", at a middle stage between the angels and the beasts of the world. Accomplish this and we potentially could lead happy and virtuous lives.^[24]

The poem is an affirmative statement of faith: life seems chaotic and confusing to man in the centre of it, but according to Pope it is truly divinely ordered. In Pope's world, God exists and is what he centres the Universe around as an ordered structure. The limited intelligence of man can only take in tiny portions of this order and experience only partial truths, hence man must rely on hope, which then leads to faith. Man must be aware of his existence in the Universe and what he brings to it in terms of riches, power and fame. Pope proclaims that man's duty is to strive to be good, regardless of other situations.^{[25][failed verification]}

The Imitations of Horace that followed (1733–1738) were written in the popular Augustan form of an "imitation" of a classical poet, not so much a translation of his works as an updating with contemporary references. Pope used the model of Horace to satirise life under George II, especially what he saw as the widespread corruption tainting the country under Walpole's influence and the poor quality of the court's artistic taste. Pope added as an introduction to Imitations a wholly original poem that reviews his own literary career and includes famous portraits of Lord Hervey ("Sporus"), Thomas Hay, 9th Earl of Kinnoull ("Balbus") and Addison ("Atticus").

In 1738 came "The Universal Prayer".^[27]

Among the younger poets whose work Pope admired was Joseph Thurston.^[28] After 1738, Pope himself wrote little. He toyed with the idea of composing a patriotic epic in blank verse called Brutus, but only the opening lines survive. His major work in those years was to revise and expand his masterpiece, The Dunciad. Book Four appeared in 1742 and a full revision of the whole poem the following year. Here Pope replaced the "hero" Lewis Theobald with the Poet Laureate, Colley Cibber as "king of dunces". However, the real focus of the revised poem is Walpole and his works. By now Pope's health, which had never been good, was failing. When told by his physician, on the morning of his death, that he was better, Pope replied: "Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms."^[29][30] He died at his villa surrounded by friends on 30 May 1744, about eleven o'clock at night. On the previous day, 29 May 1744, Pope had called for a priest and received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was buried in the nave of St Mary's Church, Twickenham.

Pope had been fascinated by Homer since childhood. In 1713, he announced plans to publish a translation of the Iliad. The work would be available by subscription, with one volume appearing every year over six years. Pope secured a revolutionary deal with the publisher Bernard Lintot, which earned him 200 guineas (£210) a volume, a vast sum at the time.

His Iliad translation appeared between 1715 and 1720. It was acclaimed by Samuel Johnson as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal". Conversely, the classical scholar Richard Bentley wrote: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer."^[31]

Encouraged by the success of the Iliad, Bernard Lintot published Pope's five-volume translation of Homer's Odyssey in 1725–1726.^[32] For this Pope collaborated with William Broome and Elijah Fenton: Broome translated eight books (2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23), Fenton four (1, 4, 19, 20) and Pope the remaining twelve. Broome provided the annotations.^[33] Pope tried to conceal the extent of the collaboration, but the secret leaked out.^[34] It did some damage to Pope's reputation for a time, but not to his profits.^[35] Leslie Stephen considered Pope's portion of the Odyssey inferior to his version of the Iliad, given that Pope had put more effort into the earlier work – to which, in any case, his style was better suited.^[36]

In this period, Pope was employed by the publisher Jacob Tonson to produce an opulent new edition of Shakespeare.^[37] When it appeared in 1725, it silently regularised Shakespeare's metre and rewrote his verse in several places. Pope also removed about 1,560 lines of Shakespeare's material, arguing that some appealed to him more than others.^[37] In 1726, the lawyer, poet and pantomime-deviser Lewis Theobald published a scathing pamphlet called Shakespeare Restored, which catalogued the errors in Pope's work and suggested several revisions to the text. This enraged Pope, wherefore Theobald became the main target of Pope's Dunciad.^[38]

The second edition of Pope's Shakespeare appeared in 1728.^[37] Apart from some minor revisions to the preface, it seems that Pope had little to do with it. Most later 18th-century editors of Shakespeare dismissed Pope's creatively motivated approach to textual criticism. Pope's preface continued to be highly rated. It was suggested that Shakespeare's texts were thoroughly contaminated by actors' interpolations and they would influence editors for most of the 18th century.

Pope's poetic career testifies to an indomitable spirit despite disadvantages of health and circumstance. The poet and his family were Catholics and so fell subject to the prohibitive Test Acts, which hampered their co-religionists after the abdication of James II. One of these banned them from living within ten miles of London, another from attending public school or university. So except for a few spurious Catholic schools, Pope was largely self-educated. He was taught to read by his aunt and became a book lover, reading in French, Italian, Latin and Greek and discovering Homer at the age of six. In 1700, when only twelve years of age, he wrote his poem Ode on Solitude.^[39][40] As a child Pope survived once being trampled by a cow, but when he was 12 he began struggling with tuberculosis of the spine (Pott disease), which restricted his growth, so that he was only 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 metres) tall as an adult. He also suffered from crippling headaches.

In the year 1709, Pope showcased his precocious metrical skill with the publication of Pastorals, his first major poems. They earned him instant fame. By the age of 23, he had written An Essay on Criticism, released in 1711. A kind of poetic manifesto in the vein of Horace's Ars Poetica, it met with enthusiastic attention and won Pope a wider circle of prominent friends, notably Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who had recently begun to collaborate on the influential The Spectator. The critic John Dennis, having found an ironic and veiled portrait of himself, was outraged by what he saw as the impudence of a younger author. Dennis hated Pope for the rest of his life, and save for a temporary reconciliation, dedicated his efforts to insulting him in print, to which Pope retaliated in kind, making Dennis the butt of much satire.

A folio containing a collection of his poems appeared in 1717, along with two new ones about the passion of love: Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and the famous proto-romantic poem Eloisa to Abelard. Though Pope never married, about this time he became strongly attached to Lady M. Montagu, whom he indirectly referenced in his popular Eloisa to Abelard, and to Martha Blount, with whom his friendship continued through his life.

As a satirist, Pope made his share of enemies as critics, politicians and certain other prominent figures felt the sting of his sharp-witted satires. Some were so virulent that Pope even carried pistols while walking his dog. In 1738 and thenceforth, Pope composed relatively little. He began having ideas for a patriotic epic in blank verse titled Brutus, but mainly revised and expanded his Dunciad. Book Four appeared in 1742; and a complete revision of the whole in the year that followed. At this time Lewis Theobald was replaced with the Poet Laureate Colley Cibber as "king of dunces", but his real target remained the Whig politician Robert Walpole.

By the mid-18th century, new fashions in poetry emerged. A decade after Pope's death, Joseph Warton claimed that Pope's style was not the most excellent form of the art. The Romantic movement that rose to prominence in early 19th-century England was more ambivalent about his work. Though Lord Byron identified Pope as one of his chief influences – believing his own scathing satire of contemporary English literature English Bards and Scotch Reviewers to be a continuance of Pope's tradition – William Wordsworth found Pope's style too decadent to represent the human condition.^[4] George Gilfillan in an 1856 study called Pope's talent "a rose peering into the summer air, fine, rather than powerful".^[41]

Pope's reputation revived in the 20th century. His work was full of references to the people and places of his time, which aided people's understanding of the past. The post-war period stressed the power of Pope's poetry, recognising that Pope's immersion in Christian and Biblical culture lent depth to his poetry. For example, Maynard Mack, in the late 20th-century, argued that Pope's moral vision demanded as much respect as his technical excellence. Between 1953 and 1967 the definitive Twickenham edition of Pope's poems appeared in ten volumes, including an index volume.^[4]

• 1709: Pastorals
• 1711: An Essay on Criticism^[42]
• 1712: Messiah (from the Book of Isaiah, and later translated into Latin by Samuel Johnson)
• 1712: The Rape of the Lock (enlarged in 1714)^[42]
• 1713: Windsor Forest^[6][42]
• 1715: The Temple of Fame: A Vision^[43]
• 1717: Eloisa to Abelard^[42]
• 1717: Three Hours After Marriage, with others
• 1717: Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady^[42]
• 1728: Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry
• 1728: The Dunciad^[42]
• 1731–1735: Moral Essays
• 1733–1734: Essay on Man^[42]
• 1735: Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot

• 1715–1720: Translation of the Iliad^[42]
• 1723–1725: The Works of Shakespear, in Six Volumes
• 1725–1726: Translation of the Odyssey^[42]

• 1700: Ode on Solitude
• 1713: Ode for Musick^[44]
• 1715: A Key to the Lock
• 1717: The Court Ballad^[45]
• 1717: Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day
• 1731: An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington^[46]
• 1733: The Impertinent, or A Visit to the Court^[47]
• 1736: Bounce to Fop^[48]
• 1737: The First Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace^[49]
• 1738: The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace^[50]

• The Works of Alexander Pope vol 3 vol 3 v 9 of 10 v 6 of 8

• Characters and Observations
• List of abolitionist forerunners
• Pope's Urn

• "The Author as Editor: Congreve and Pope in Context."The Book Collector 41 (no 1) Spring, 1992:9-27.
• Davis, Herbert, ed. (1966). Poetical Works. Oxford Standard Authors. London: Oxford U.P.
• Mack, Maynard (1985). Alexander Pope. A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Ostrom, Hans (1878). "Pope's Epilogue to the Satires, 'Dialogue I'." Explicator, 36:4, pp. 11–14.
• Rogers, Pat (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Alexander Pope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Tillotson, Geoffrey (2nd ed. 1950). On the Poetry of Pope. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press.
• Tillotson, Geoffrey (1958). Pope and Human Nature. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press.

• Alexander Pope at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
• Works by Alexander Pope at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Alexander Pope at the Internet Archive
• Works by Alexander Pope at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• John Wilkes and Alexander Pope – UK Parliament Living Heritage
• Lennox, Patrick Joseph (1911). "Alexander Pope" . Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12.
• Minto, William; Bryant, Margaret (1911). "Pope, Alexander" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 22 (11th ed.). pp. 82–87.
• BBC audio file. In Our Time, radio 4 discussion of Pope.
• University of Toronto "Representative Poetry Online" page on Pope
• Pope's Grave
• The Twickenham Museum Archived 14 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine
• Pope's Grotto Preservation Trust
• Richmond Libraries' Local Studies Collection. Local History. Accessed 2010-10-19
• "Archival material relating to Alexander Pope". UK National Archives.
• Portraits of Alexander Pope at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Images relating to Alexander Pope Archived 31 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine at the English Heritage Archive
• Blue Plaque at 110 Chiswick Lane South, Chiswick, London W4 2LR

Rev. Richard Warner (1763–1857) was an English clergyman and writer of a considerable number of topographical books based on his walks and his interest in antiquarianism.^[1]

Richard Warner was born in St. Marylebone on 18 October 1763. His father, also Richard Warner, was a respectable London tradesman who owned the Two Civet Cats & Olive Tree, an Italian warehouse or delicatessen shop in fashionable New Bond Street.^[2]

His early education was undertaken by a Scottish nanny, but at the age of five he was separated from his happy home life and sent to a boarding school located closer to the centre of London. His removal from this unhappy environment came in about 1775 when his father retired and moved his family to the sedate town of Lymington on the south coast. There Warner was educated at Christchurch Grammar School, which was housed in a chamber high above the Lady chapel of the ancient Priory church. He there met and befriended fellow student Harry Burrard of Walhampton near Lymington, who became a distinguished naval officer. From his elevated classroom the schoolboy Warner more than once witnessed large gangs of smugglers landing their contraband on nearby Hengistbury Head in broad daylight. It was while at Christchurch that Warner became interested in antiquities and started to dig into ancient barrows. He met naturalist Gustavus Brander, who resided next to the church.^[3]

Warner decided to enter the priesthood and fully expected to attend Winchester College to pursue this career. A family friend had promised to nominate him for a foundation as soon as he became a Poser at the College, but on the very day of the entrance examination he told Warner’s father that he would instead be nominating another boy in obligation to his patron, possibly Lord Somerset, to whom he was chaplain. Warner's dreams of going on to a fellowship at New College, Oxford and subsequent ordination as a churchman were shattered. Bitterly disappointed, he remained at Christchurch for a further seven years. During this time he considered following some of his former school friends into the Royal Navy, and indeed had the option of becoming a Midshipman on board the 44-gun frigate HMS Romulus. However, an impassioned letter from his father persuaded him to reconsider and pursue a land-based career.^[3] He instead went to work in an attorney's office.^[1]

Warner started his further education late, matriculating at St. Mary's Hall, Oxford in 1787, aged 24.^[4] He stayed there for nearly three years. He had a chance to become a curate to the Rev. William Gilpin at Boldre in Hampshire, who needed Warner as he could no longer carry out his duties. Warner had, however, left Oxford without graduating, and there was a diversion: with the support of Warren Hastings, he was ordained by William Markham, Archbishop of York at Bishopthorpe, as from Magdalen Hall. After three months as curate in the village of Wales, South Yorkshire, he went on to Boldre as curate. Gilpin became a mentor to his curate, passing on to Warner his love of literature, walking and the countryside.^[1][5]

Later, in 1793, Warner became the Rev. Henry Drummond's curate at Fawley.^[1] By this time he had published several further books on Lymington, a transcription of Hampshire's Domesday Book entries, and a reissue of ancient cookery books including a Forme of Cury.

Warner obtained his first position as a minister at All Saints in Bath in 1794 and after only a year he moved on to the nearby St James' Church. Warner was still writing books for both interest and profit. In 1795 a first novel, a two volume historical Gothic fiction inspired by the ruins of Netley Abbey near Southampton was published. Also in 1795, A History of Hampshire was published under Warner's name, but this is thought to be someone else's work. Now based in Bath he was able to investigate the many local antiquities and published many articles and two books on that city. Warner married in 1801 and became a father in 1802. He was at St James' Church until 1817.^[1]

In August 1796 Warner went on holiday to Wales, walking an average 26 miles a day, and recorded his travels in letters that were later published. Their success led further books on other tours, including the Scottish borders, the western counties and another tour of Wales.^[1][6]

William Wordsworth and his friend James Losh dined as guests of Warner in July 1798.^[7] Losh was a friend, while Wordsworth collected travel writing in the picturesque register, including works by Gilpin and Warner.^[8][9]

In 1804 Warner preached a sermon that proved contentious, later published under the title War inconsistent with Christianity, on Matthew 26:52. The audience included officers and men of the Bath Volunteers militia. Warner was defended by Thomas Parsons, a local Baptist minister.^[10] The sermon, for a fast day, provoked many replies, but sold well, and Warner repeated it in 1805, on the next fast day.^[11] The essay by Parsons supporting him was reprinted in 1813.^[12] In 1808, Warner published Letter to the People of England, on Petitioning the Throne for the Restoration of Peace.^[13] The prominence of these eirenic works by a Church of England cleric has led to an interpretation of a phrase in William Blake's prophetic book Jerusalem, "ask him if he is Bath or if he is Canterbury", with Warner's "peace party" represented by Bath as metonym. The suggestion is from the Blake scholar David Erdman.^[14]

Warner published satirical books on Bath society under noms de plume, 1807–9. As priest, he took on also the parish of Great Chalfield in 1809, presented to it by Sir Harry Burrard-Neale: it is thought he never resided there.^[15][16]

In 1814 Warner started a fortnightly periodical, Omnium (the) Gatherum; or, Bath, Bristol, and Cheltenham literary repository, edited anonymously with Joseph Hunter. Just seven numbers were published.^[17] Hunter believed that "liberality of sentiment" of sentiment had held Warner back from further advancement in his clerical career, despite popular success: he supported Charles James Fox and parliamentary reform, but opposed Catholic emancipation. George Henry Law, a later Bishop of Bath and Wells, proved more sympathetic.^[6]

Warner died in 1857 and was outlived by his wife, Ann Pearson, who died in 1865. They had two daughters.^[6]

• A companion in a tour round Lymington (1789)
• Hampshire extracted from Domes-day book (1789)
• Antiquitates culinariae; or, Curious tracts relating to the culinary affairs of the Old English, with a preliminary discourse, notes, and illus. (1791)
• An attempt to ascertain the situation of the ancient Clausentum (1792)
• Topographical remarks relating to the South-western parts of Hampshire (1793)
• General view of the agriculture of the county of Hants (1794)
• The history of the Isle of Wight (1795)
• Netley Abbey: a Gothic story (1795)
• An illustration of the Roman antiquities discovered at Bath (1797)
• A Walk through Wales (1799)
• A walk through some of the western counties of England (1800)
• History of Bath (1801)
• A Second Walk through Wales (1800)
• A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland (1802)^[18]
• Chronological History of our Lord and Saviour: an English Diatessaron (1803)
• National Blessings reasons for National Gratitude^[19]
• Bath characters : or, sketches from life / by Peter Paul Pallet (1808)
• Divine Providence evidenced in the Causes, Consequences, and Termination of the late War (1814)^[20]
• A Letter to ... Henry Ryder, D.D. Lord Bishop of Gloucester, on the Admission to Holy Orders of Young Men, Holding ... Evangelical Principles, to which is Added a Biographical Sketch of the Late Rev. Archibald Maclaine (1818),^[21] with a reply in the same year from "Mephibosheth"^[22]
• Sermons on the Epistles or Gospels for the Sundays throughout the year (including Christmas-Day and Good-Friday) for the use of families and country congregations... (1819)
• Illustrations, historical, biographical and miscellaneous, of the novels by the author of Waverley: with criticism, general and particular (1823)
• Literary Recollections (1830)
• Great Britain's crisis!: reform; retrenchment; economy; the farmers and labouring poor: a letter to the Rt. Hon. Sir James Graham, Bart. (1831) JSTOR 60204077

• Antiquitates Culinariae by Richard Warner, PDF

William Smith
1837 portrait of Smith
Born	(1769-03-23)23 March 1769 Churchill, Oxfordshire, England
Died	28 August 1839(1839-08-28) (aged 70) Northampton, England
Known for	Geological map of England and Wales
Awards	Wollaston Medal (1831)
Scientific career
Fields	Geology

William 'Strata' Smith (23 March 1769 – 28 August 1839) was an English geologist, credited with creating the first detailed, nationwide geological map of any country.^[1] At the time his map was first published he was overlooked by the scientific community; his relatively humble education and family connections prevented him from mixing easily in learned society. Financially ruined, Smith spent time in debtors' prison. It was only late in his life that Smith received recognition for his accomplishments, and became known as the "Father of English Geology".^[2]

Smith was born on 23 March 1769, in Churchill, Oxfordshire, the son of John Smith (1735–1777), the village blacksmith, and his wife Ann (née Smith; 1745–1807).^[3] His father died when Smith was eight years old, and he and his siblings were raised by his uncle, a farmer also named William Smith.^[4] Largely self-educated, Smith was intelligent and observant, read widely from an early age, and showed an aptitude for mathematics and drawing. In 1787, he met and found work as an assistant for Edward Webb of Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, a surveyor. He was quick to learn and soon became proficient at the trade.

In 1791, Smith travelled to Somerset to make a valuation survey of the Sutton Court estate, and building on earlier work in the same area by John Strachey.^[5] He stayed in the area for the next eight years, working first for Webb and later for the Somersetshire Coal Canal Company, living at Rugborne Farm in High Littleton. During this period, Smith inspected coal mines in the area, where he first observed and recorded the various layers of rock and coal exposed by the mining. Smith's coal mine studies, combined with his subsequent observations of the strata exposed by canal excavations, proved crucial to the formation of his theories of stratigraphy.

Smith worked at one of the estate's older mines, the Mearns Pit at High Littleton, part of the Somerset coalfield and the Somerset Coal Canal.^[6] As he observed the rock layers (or strata) at the pit, he realised that they were arranged in a predictable pattern and that the various strata could always be found in the same relative positions. Additionally, each particular stratum could be identified by the fossils it contained, and the same succession of fossil groups from older to younger rocks could be found in many parts of England. Furthermore, he noticed an easterly dip of the beds of rock—low near the surface (about three degrees), then higher after the Triassic rocks. This gave Smith a testable hypothesis, which he termed The Principle of Faunal Succession, and he began his search to determine if the relationships between the strata and their characteristics were consistent throughout the country.^[7] During subsequent travels, first as a surveyor (appointed by noted engineer John Rennie) for the canal company until 1799 when he was dismissed, and later, he was continually taking samples and mapping the locations of the various strata, and displaying the vertical extent of the strata, and drawing cross-sections and tables of what he saw. This would earn him the name "Strata Smith".^[8] As a natural consequence, Smith amassed a large and valuable collection of fossils of the strata he had examined himself from exposures in canals, road and railway cuttings, quarries and escarpments across the country. He also developed methods for the identification of deposits of Fuller's earth to the south of Bath, Somerset.^[9]

He published his findings with many pictures from his fossil collection, enabling others to investigate their distribution and test his theories. His collection is especially good on Jurassic fossils he collected from the Cornbrash, Kimmeridge Clay, Oxford Clay, Oolitic limestone and other horizons in the sequence. They included many types of brachiopods, ammonites and molluscs characteristic of the shallow seas in which they were deposited. Some of the names he coined (like Cornbrash) are still used today for this formation.

It could be seen from Smith's findings that the deeper – and therefore older – the strata were, the more the fossilised species within them differed from living organisms. This gave great support and impetus to the hypothesis of biological evolution (which pre-dated the work of Charles Darwin).^[10]

In 1799, Smith produced the first large-scale geological map of the area around Bath. Previously, he only knew how to draw the vertical extent of the rocks, but not how to display them horizontally. However, in the Somerset County Agricultural Society, he found a map showing the types of soils and vegetation around Bath and their geographical extent. Importantly, the differing types were coloured. Using this technique, Smith could draw a geological map from his observations showing the outcrops of the rocks. He took a few rock types, each with its own colour. Then he estimated the boundaries of each of the outcrops of rock, filled them in with colour and ended up with a crude geological map.

In 1801, he drew a rough sketch of what would become the first geological map of most of Great Britain. In the same year he claimed that a book he proposed to publish would provide geological information to enable the canal engineer to "choose his stratum, find the most appropriate materials, avoid slippery ground, or remedy the evil".^[11] The book was never published however.^[12] Smith travelled extensively across Great Britain working as a mineral surveyor allowing him to meet prominent people such as Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester, and the Duke of Bedford.^[13]

In 1815, Smith published his geological map, coloured on an especially prepared base map by John Cary at a scale of 5 miles to the inch and titled 'A delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with part of Scotland.' While this was not the world's first geological map (a map of the United States by William Maclure was published six years earlier),^[14][15] Smith's was the first geological map covering such a large area in detail,^[16] and is one of the first stratigraphical analyses to utilize palaeontological indices.^[17] Conventional symbols were used to mark canals, tunnels, tramways and roads, collieries, lead, copper and tin mines, together with salt and alum works. The various geological strata were indicated by different colours, applied to the map by hand. Smith used a graded colouring method applying a bolder colour to the edge representing the base of each stratum, thus depicting its stratigraphical relations. The map is similar to modern geological maps of England (albeit today's maps use flat-colouring) reflecting its general accuracy in the eastern and south eastern regions of the country. However Smith's geology of western part of England and Wales was much less detailed and accurate. Smith included a 'Sketch of the succession of STRATA and their relative Altitudes' on the map, showing the disposition of strata from London to the mountains of Snowdonia. This was not a new technique in itself, but its appearance on a map, with the clear intention of illustrating the relationship between relief and rocks and their structure, was novel.^[18]

In his book Strata Identified by Organized Fossils (London 1816–1819),^[19] Smith recognised that strata contained distinct fossil assemblages which could be used to match rocks across regions.^[20] In 1817, he drew a remarkable geological section from Snowdon to London, a development of the ‘sketch' on his map, illustrating the three-dimensional relationship between geology and landscape via a perspective sketch of the landscape showing the topography. Effectively this was the first block diagram, now routinely used in geography textbooks and animations.^[21]

A common narrative in some recent accounts of Smith's life and his map asserts that rivalry built up between Smith and the first President of the Geological Society, George Bellas Greenough, who was also engaged in producing a geological map of England and Wales.^[22][23][24] However original sources point to this narrative not being the case and indicate Smith was used by John Farey Sr., another 'practical man' (i.e. mineral surveyor), to prosecute Farey's own grievances against the Geological Society in an article in The Philosophical Magazine by which he both started and fuelled the story that Smith was disrespected and there was ill-feeling towards him by the Geological Society men and Greenough in particular.^[25] In the following issue Greenough replied, publicly declaring his view as being non-antagonistic by stating:

Your correspondent considers me, in common with many other persons, actuated by feelings of hostility towards Mr. Smith. Now my feelings towards that gentleman are directly the reverse. I respect him for the important services he has rendered to geology, and I esteem him for the example of dignity, meekness, modesty, and candour, which he continually, though ineffectually, exhibits to his self-appointed champion.^[26]

Another common but misleading narrative in some recent accounts of Smith's map has Greenough's 1820 map undercutting the price and sales of Smith's map, thereby citing Greenough as a primary cause of landing Smith in debtor's prison. However, Greenough's map could not have contributed to the debts for which Smith was consigned to prison as the Greenough map, although dated 1819 on the map, was not published until May 1820, after Smith's incarceration. In fact Smith's maps retailed at 5 guineas, which was the same price as that privileged to Geological Society members for purchase of the Greenough 1820 map. However the Greenough map retailed to public at 6 guineas, thereby being a more expensive purchase than Smith's map.^[27] Also, although neither map sold well, the number of sales of Smith's map appears to have topped those of Greenough's map (only 196 copies recorded as sold) and there are only 15 names in common between Smith's subscribers' list and the list of those who bought the Geological Society's map.^[28]

Smith's various projects, starting with a mortgage taken to purchase his estate at Tucking Mill in Somerset in 1798, accrued financial commitments that ran into a series of difficulties which he managed to withstand by borrowing money from sympathetic creditors and mortgagors and funding repayments by taking on a relentless schedule of work commissions between 1801 and 1819. However a project to quarry Bath Stone near his property, for sale to the London property development market, failed to return the significant investment it had required due to poor quality stone and Smith found himself in default to co-investor Charles Conolly. Smith had used his Bath estate as security against Conolly's loan but there was excess to pay. In attempting to stave off his debt Smith sold his 'fossil collection' to the British Museum for £700,^[29] but this proved insufficient and funds fell short of the sum owed to Conolly by £300 and as a consequence Smith was sent to debtors' prison in 1819. Through all this financial turmoil, Smith managed to publish his map and subsequent associated publications but in 1817 he remarked "My income is as yet not anywise improved by what has been done, the profits being required to liquidate the debt incurred by publication."^[30]

On 31 August 1819, Smith was released from King's Bench Prison in London, a debtor's prison.^[31] He returned to 15 Buckingham Street, his home since 1804, to find a bailiff at the door and his home and property seized. Smith then worked as an itinerant surveyor for many years until one of his employers, Sir John Johnstone, recognised his work and talent and took steps to gain for him the respect he deserved, appointing Smith as Land Steward to his estate in Hackness near Scarborough. Between 1824 and 1834, Smith lived and was based in Hackness, then moving to Scarborough where he was responsible for the design of the Rotunda, a geological museum devoted to the Yorkshire coast, creating the cylindrical layout and arrangement of fossil display on sloping shelves.

It was not until February 1831 that the Geological Society of London conferred on Smith the first Wollaston Medal in recognition of his achievement.^[32] It was on this occasion that the President, Adam Sedgwick, referred to Smith as "the Father of English Geology". That year Smith was awarded a pension of £100 a year by King William IV.^[33] In 1835 Smith travelled to Dublin for the meeting of the British Association, and there unexpectedly received an honorary Doctorate of Laws (LL.D.) from Trinity College.^[34]

By 1841, the Institution of Civil Engineers had begun to promote the use of geological models in the design of civil engineering projects, with Smith's work and status as "Father of Geology" referenced by Thomas Sopwith in an address to the Institution that year.^[35]

In 1838, Smith was appointed as one of the commissioners to select building-stone for the new Palace of Westminster. He died in Northampton on 28 August 1839, aged 70, and is buried a few feet from the west tower of St Peter's Church, Northampton, now a redundant church. The inscription on the grave is badly worn but the name "William Smith" can just be seen. Inside St Peter's Church is an impressive bust and inscription.

Subsequent modern geological maps have been based on Smith's original work, of which several copies have survived^[36] including one which has been put on display (alongside the Greenough map) at the Geological Society of London which can be visited by the public, free and without an appointment.^[37]

• The Map that Changed the World, a biography of Smith by Simon Winchester
• Geology of Great Britain

• John Diemer (editor), Special Issue from the William Smith Map Bicentenary Meeting sponsored by the History of Geology Group and held at the Geological Society London, 23–24 April 2015. Earth Sciences History, Volume 25, No. 1. Online ISSN 1944-6187
• John L. Morton, Strata (New Edition, 2004), Horsham: Brocken Spectre Publishing. ISBN 0-9546829-1-2
• Simon Winchester, The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, (2001), New York: HarperCollins, ISBN 0-14-028039-1
• John Phillips, Memoirs of William Smith (1844, republished with additional material by Hugh Torrens, 2003 ISBN 0-9544941-0-5).
• Hugh Torrens, "In Commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the death of William Smith (1769–1839)"
• William Smith's Private Papers, Oxford University

• Works of William Smith at the Oxford Digital Library
• William Smith's Maps – Interactive – different issues of the maps with authoritative background information
• Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with Part of Scotland – full digital facsimile at Linda Hall Library

The Right Reverend Peter Augustine Baines O.S.B.
Vicar Apostolic of the Western District
Appointed	3 March 1829
Term ended	6 July 1843
Predecessor	Peter Collingridge
Successor	Charles Michael Baggs
Other post(s)	Titular Bishop of Sigus
Previous post(s)	Coadjutor Vicar Apostolic of the Western District (1823–1829)
Orders
Ordination	7 April 1810
Consecration	1 May 1823 by Daniel Murray
Personal details
Born	25 June 1786 or 25 January 1787 Peartree Farm, Kirkby, near Liverpool, England
Died	6 July 1843 Prior Park College, Bath, Somerset, England
Buried	Downside Abbey, Stratton-on-the-Fosse, Somerset, England
Nationality	British
Denomination	Roman Catholic

Peter Augustine Baines (1786/87–1843) was an English Benedictine, Titular Bishop of Siga and Vicar Apostolic of the Western District of England.

For his early education he was sent to Lamspringe Abbey, near Hildesheim, in the Kingdom of Hanover, where he arrived in 1798. Four years later the monastery was suppressed by the Prussian Government,^[1] and the monks and their pupils returned to England. Some of them, including Baines, took refuge at the recently founded monastery at Ampleforth, Yorkshire. He joined the Benedictine Order, and held in succession every post of authority in the monastery, the priorship alone excepted.

In 1817 Baines left Ampleforth and was appointed to Bath, one of the most important Benedictine missions in the country. There he became a well-known figure, his sermons attracting attention not only among Catholics, but also among Protestants. His printed letters in answer to Charles Abel Moysey, Archdeacon of Bath, became known as Baines's Defence.^[2]

Bishop Peter Bernardine Collingridge, Vicar Apostolic of the Western District selected Baines as his coadjutor. He received episcopal consecration as Titular Bishop of Siga by Archbishop Daniel Murray at Dublin, 1 May 1823.

Bishop Baines soon began to formulate schemes for the future of the district, on a large scale. It was without a regular seminary for the education of its clergy. The Western District differed from the other three in that the bishop had always been chosen from among the regular clergy, Benedictines or Franciscans, and a large proportion of the missions were in their hands. Baines thought that he saw the solution of his difficulty in utilising the recently opened Downside School, near Bath, under Benedictine management. Baines proposed that the whole community of monks at Downside should be transferred from the Anglo-Benedictine Congregation, and placed under the Bishop of the Western District, but these proposals were not warmly received.

In 1826 Bishop Baines' health worsened and he was ordered a long tour on the Continent. He spent the greater part of the time in Rome. Bishop Collingridge died on 3 March 1829, the same year in which Catholic emancipation was passed. Bishop Baines returned to England, in restored health, to succeed as vicar Apostolic.

He at once revived his scheme for the seminary at Downside, and, having failed to secure the consent of the monks, he put forward the contention that the monasteries at Downside and Ampleforth had never been canonically erected, for, owing to the unsettled condition of the English mission, the formality of obtaining the written consent of the ordinary had been overlooked. He drew the drastic conclusion that all the monastic vows had been invalid, and that the property belonged to the bishops. The case was argued out in Rome, but it was considered that, even if the strict law was on Bishop Baines' side, equity demanded that the rights of the Benedictines should be maintained, and a sanatio was issued by papal authority, making good any possible defects in the past. Leave was given for four monks at Ampleforth, including the prior, to be secularised. They left, together with thirty of the boys, to join Bishop Baines, who had himself been secularised, in founding a new college.

The site chosen was Prior Park College, a large mansion outside Bath, which Bishop Baines bought, and he set to work to build two colleges at either end of the "mansion house", which he dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul respectively, the former being intended as a lay college, the latter as a seminary, but the new college never became prosperous. In 1840 the number of vicariates in England was raised from four to eight, Wales being separated off into a district of its own. Bishop Baines continued over the Western District for three years more, when his sudden death took place.

On 4 July 1843, he distributed the prizes at Prior Park; the following day he preached at the opening of the new church of St Mary on the Quay, Bristol, returning to Prior Park in the evening, apparently in his usual health; but the following morning he was found dead in his bed. His funeral was at Prior Park and some years later, his body was removed to Downside Abbey.

An oil painting of him, formerly at Prior Park, is now at the Bishop's House (St. Ambrose), Clifton. There is an engraving in the Catholic Directory for 1844. Also a large portrait hangs in the Chapel of the Lady of our Snows at Prior Park College.

• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Peter Augustine Baines" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• "Baines, Peter Augustine" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
• Brady, W. Maziere (1876). The Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland and Ireland, A.D. 1400 to 1875. Vol. 3. Rome: Tipografia Della Pace. pp. 312–318 and 327–329.
• George Oliver, Collections (1857)
• Nicholas Wiseman, Last Four Popes
• Henry Norbert Birt, Downside (1902)
• Cuthbert Almond, History of Ampleforth Abbey (1903)

Alexander Raphael (1775–1850) was a British politician who was the first British-Armenian to serve in the House of Commons.^[1] He was returned as a Whig MP from the Irish constituency of County Carlow, at a by-election in June 1835. However the election was challenged on petition and he was unseated on 19 August 1835. Raphael succeeded in re-entering the House of Commons as a Catholic Whig from St Albans in 1847 and retained the seat until his death.

Prior to serving in Parliament, he had been Sheriff of London for 1834, where he lost the tip of his left index finger in a fight with a criminal.^[2]

Raphael was born in Madras, India to father Edward Raphael, a founder of Carniac Bank who died in 1791, and mother Maria Stephana Manuel, who died in 1790. He was baptised as a Catholic. His father was reportedly descended from Armenians (surnamed either Gharamiants or Kharan) who moved to New Julfa, Iran in the mid-17th century and then Madras. Raphael was tutored by Father Nicholas Pusani.^[3]

His legacy is St Raphael's Church in Surbiton, London, which he financed and had built as a family chapel. Completed in 1848, only two years before his death, it was later opened to the public as a Roman Catholic church by his nephew, Edward.^[4]

• Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922, edited by B.M. Walker (Royal Irish Academy 1978)
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs
• James Corbett, A History of St Albans states that Alexander Raphael was a Whig, as does F.W.S. Craig in British Parliamentary Election Results 1832-1885.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Alexander Raphael

The Right Honourable The Earl de Montalt
Maude as caricatured in Vanity Fair, November 1881
Born	Cornwallis Maude (1817-04-04)4 April 1817 London, England
Died	9 January 1905(1905-01-09) (aged 87) Isle of Anglesey, Wales
Nationality	British
Occupation	Politician
Title	Earl de Montalt Viscount Hawarden
Spouse	Clementina Elphinstone Fleeming ​ ​ (m. 1845; died 1865)​
Children	8
Parent(s)	Cornwallis Maude, 3rd Viscount Hawarden Jane Crauford Bruce

Cornwallis Maude, 1st Earl de Montalt (4 April 1817 – 9 January 1905), styled The Honourable Cornwallis Maude until 1856 and known as The Viscount Hawarden from 1856 to 1886, was a British Conservative politician.

Maude was the only son of Cornwallis Maude, 3rd Viscount Hawarden, and his wife Jane (née Bruce).

Maude succeeded his father in the viscountcy in 1856 but as this was an Irish peerage it did not entitle him to an automatic seat in the House of Lords. However, in 1862 he was elected an Irish representative peer, and later served in the Conservative administrations of the Earl of Derby, Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Salisbury as a Lord-in-waiting (government whip in the House of Lords) from 1866 to 1868, 1874 to 1880 and 1885 to 1886. In the latter year, he was created Earl de Montalt, of Dundrum in the County of Tipperary, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Between 1885 and 1905 he also held the honorary post of Lord-Lieutenant of County Tipperary.

Lord de Montalt married Clementina, eldest daughter of Admiral Charles Elphinstone Fleeming, in 1845, and had ten children, of whom eight survived infancy. She was a noted amateur photographer. She died in 1865. One of their sons, the Honourable Cornwallis Maude, a captain in the Grenadier Guards, was killed in action at the Battle of Majuba Hill in 1881. Of their daughters, probably the best known is Kathleen, who was divorced for adultery by her first husband, Gerald Brooke, in 1886, a case which aroused enormous media interest. Lord de Montalt died on 9 January 1905, aged 87, at a hotel at Holyhead, Anglesey. While waiting for a boat to Ireland he became too ill to travel and died. As he had no surviving sons the earldom became extinct on his death. He was succeeded in his other titles by his cousin Robert Henry Maude.

• Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990, ^{[page needed]}
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages ^{[self-published source] [better source needed]}
• Lundy, Darryl. "FAQ". The Peerage.^{[unreliable source]}

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl de Montalt