where he devoted much time and care to the revision of his printed works for a complete edition in four volumes, in which were also to be included two unpublished treatises, Nouvelle Manière de prouver l'Immortalité de l'Ame,' and 'Notes sur le Commentaire philosophique de M. Bayle.' Relying upon a remarkable memory, he put off writing until copy was demanded by the printer. These two treatises were thus unfinished, and no trace of them could be found after his death. He died at his lodgings at Marylebone on Monday, 25 Sept. 1727, in the 74th year of his age (Daily Courant, 5 Oct. 1727; Daily Post, 6 Oct. 1727; Historical Register, 1727).

[Niceron's Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire des Hommes illustres dans la République des Lettres, vol. xxxiii.; Essai historique, prefixed to Sermons et Panégyriques, 1760; Burn's History of the French, Walloon, Dutch, and other Foreign Protestant Refugees settled in England, Svo, London, 1846; MM. Haag's La France Protestante; Illaire's Etude sur Jacques Abbadie considéré comme Prédicateur, 8vo, Strasburg, 1858; Weiss's History of the French Protestant Refugees, 1854; Agnew's Protestant Exiles from France in the reign of Louis XIV, 2nd edition,

1871-74.]

A. H. G.

ABBOT, CHARLES (d. 1817), botanist, sometime fellow of New College, Oxford, took his M.A. degree in 1788, and those of B.D. and D.D. in 1802. He was vicar of Oakley Raynes and Goldington, Bedfordshire, and chaplain to the Marquis of Tweeddale. In 1798 he published a 'Flora Bedfordiensis,' and in 1807 a volume of sermons entitled Parochial Divinity.' He also wrote a Monody on the Death of Horatio, Lord Nelson,' in 1805. His herbarium, prepared by his wife, is preserved at Turvey Abbey; it is contained in five folio volumes, but its value for critical purposes is but small. He became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1793, and died at Bedford, October 1817.

[Gent. Mag. 1817, ii. 378; Journal of Botany, 1881, p. 40.] J. B.

ABBOT, CHARLES, first BARON COLCHESTER (1757-1829), speaker of the House of Commons, 1802-1817, was born 14 Oct. 1757, at Abingdon, Berkshire. His father, the Rev. John Abbot, D.D., was a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and rector of All Saints, Colchester. His mother was Sarah, daughter of Mr. Jonathan Farr, citizen of London. Dr. Abbot died in 1760, and his widow subsequently became the wife of Jeremy Bentham, Esq., father by a former marriage of the well-known writer on jurisprudence. The Abbots had been settled in

Dorsetshire from the year 1100, when Richard Abbot was high sheriff of the county; but the immediate ancestors of the Speaker had resided for some generations at Shaftesbury. Charles was sent to Westminster in March 1763, before he was six years old, and at the age of thirteen was admitted into college.' In 1775 he was elected to Christ Church, where he went into residence in January 1776. He won the college prize for Latin verse in his first year, and in his second the chancellor's prize, the subject being 'Petrus Magnus;' and so highly were such performances valued at that time, that the Empress Catharine, to whom the verses had been presented, sent him a gold medal. At this time the wellknown scholar, Markham, was dean of Christ Church; and for five successive years the chancellor's prize was carried off by ChristChurch men, among them being Abbot, Lord Wellesley, and Lord Grenville. On leaving Oxford in the summer of 1778, Abbot spent a year in Switzerland in the study of the civil law, and in the year following took chambers in Lincoln's Inn, and began to keep terms at the Middle Temple.

In 1781 Abbot was elected Vinerian scho

lar by the university of Oxford, and five years afterwards Vinerian fellow, appointments which involved residence at the university. In 1783 he was called to the bar, and joined the Oxford circuit; but in 1792, upon transferring his attentions to the equity courts, he found it necessary to resign his fellowship and reside in London. He was now earning by his profession about 1,5007. a year; but the work of the bar was too hard for him: a life of unceasing and ungrateful toil,' he calls it, 'from daybreak to midnight.' Accordingly in 1794 he accepted the office of clerk of the rules in the court of King's Bench, a place worth 2,700l. a year. He discharged his duty energetically for seven years, collecting and endorsing old records which had been left to moulder in garrets, and purchasing law books for the use of the King's Bench. At the expiration of this period the Duke of Leeds, who had been his schoolfellow at Westminster, offered him the borough of Helston in Cornwall. Abbot accepted the offer, and took his seat in the House of Commons in the autumn of 1795. Having turned his attention to the introduction of practical improvements in legislation, in his first session he obtained a committee to inquire into the manner of dealing with expiring laws. Its report established the practice of making complete annual tables of the temporary laws of the United Kingdom, so that none, as had formerly happened, should expire unobserved. In 1797

he brought before parliament a plan for the due promulgation of the statutes in all public offices and courts of justice, including magistrates' courts, by furnishing them with a copy of all acts of parliament as soon as printed; thus enabling them to see readily the state of the law which they had to administer, instead of being obliged to refer to private collections of acts. He was also 'exceedingly desirous to have introduced a more improved style and diction in all public acts, but the matter was full of difficulties, and, though exhorted by all, he was helped by none.' The project, therefore fell to the ground (Memoir).

In 1797 a finance committee was appointed by Pitt, of which Abbot was the chairman; and for two years he gave his undivided attention to it. The committee made thirtysix reports, of which many were drawn up by Abbot himself; and one of the most beneficial results of his investigations was a bill for charging public accountants with the payment of interest. In the year 1800 he obtained a committee to inquire into the condition of the national records. And in December of the same year he introduced the first Census Act for ascertaining the population of Great Britain.

Abbot had always lived on terms of great intimacy with Addington, and on the latter becoming prime minister in February 1801, the member for Helston was selected to fill the post of chief secretary for Ireland. The office of secretary of state for Ireland, which was then held by Lord Castlereagh, was at the time abolished, and to do the work of the office a secretary to the lord lieutenant, and a keeper of the privy seal for Ireland, a sinecure office which might be held for life, were appointed. The latter post was added to Abbot's secretaryship to compensate him for the loss of his situation in the King's Bench. He arrived in Ireland in July 1801, and in the following October received the tidings of the peace of Amiens, which liberated the Irish government from its gravest anxieties. The remainder of his term of office was devoted to those official and departmental reforms for which he was so eminently qualified; but on the death of Lord Clare, the Irish lord chancellor, in January 1802, Sir John Mitford, the successor of Addington in the speakership, received the great seal, and Abbot was recalled from Dublin to occupy the vacant chair. His diary and correspondence whilst in Ireland may still be read with great profit.

Abbot was elected to the speakership on 11 Feb. 1802. He paid, he says, to his predecessor 1,0607. for the state coach which had been built in 1701, 1,000l. for wine, and 5007.

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for furniture. At the general election of 1802 the new speaker was returned for Woodstock, a seat which he held till 1806, when, on the dissolution of parliament by Lord Grenville, he was returned for the university of Oxford. His tenure of office was far from uneventful. It fell to his lot to give the casting vote on Mr. Whitbread's resolutions impugning the conduct of Lord Melville as treasurer of the navy, amid a scene long remembered as one of the most striking that have ever been witnessed within the walls of the House of Commons. Mr. Pitt had moved the previous question, and on the division the numbers were 216 on each side. Abbot turned as white as a sheet, says an eye-witness, and paused for at least ten minutes, after which he explained very briefly his reasons for voting in favour of the question being put, which was accordingly put and carried, to the intense grief of Mr. Pitt, who pulled his cocked hat over his face to hide the tears which trickled down his cheeks.

Two important controversies, touching the duty and authority of the speaker, occurred during Abbot's speakership. The earlier of the two arose on the resistance by Sir Francis Burdett to the execution of the speaker's warrant for committing him to the Tower in the year 1810. Sir Francis denied the legality of the warrant, and refused to surrender to it; whereupon the question arose whether the sergeant-at-arms was empowered by Mr. Abbot's warrant to break open the doors of his house. The attorney-general, Sir Vicary Gibbs, gave a very guarded opinion; but one, nevertheless, on which the sergeant felt justified in acting: he forced Burdett's doors, and the prisoner was conveyed to the Tower, where he remained till the prorogation set him free. He at once brought an action against both the speaker and the sergeant the court of King's Bench, when judgment was given for the defendants. The question was carried by writ of error to the Exchequer Chamber, and afterwards to the House of Lords, but in each case with the same result.

in

The second of the two questions raised during Abbot's tenure of office was the right of the speaker to include in his address to the sovereign on the prorogation of parliament a reference to measures to which the house had not given its consent. In his address to the prince regent in July 1813, Abbot had introduced some remarks on the bill for the removal of Roman catholic disabilities which had been defeated in committee. Mr. Grant said in the debate, 'What it is not lawful for the king to notice, it is not lawful for the speaker to express.' Lord Morpeth moved, on 22 April 1814, that the address of the

speaker on the occasion referred to should not be drawn into a precedent. The motion was defeated by a large majority, but, according to Sir Erskine May, the correctness of the doctrine upheld by the opposition has since been recognised in practice, and the speaker in addressing her majesty adverts only to the most important measures which have received the sanction of parliament during the session. Seventy years ago the office of speaker was more laborious than it is now, and in 1816 Abbot's health gave way, and he was obliged to send in his resignation. He retired with a peerage, and selected the title of Colchester; he received a pension of 4,000l. a year for himself, and 3,000l. for his immediate suc

cessor.

Abbot is certainly to be classed among the most distinguished men who have ever occupied the chair. Perceval vainly urged him to become secretary of state in 1809. Whitbread said that he was superior to any other speaker he had ever known. He was formally thanked by the House of Commons in 1808 for his upright, able, and impartial conduct; and both Lord Liverpool and Lord Castlereagh spoke of him on his retirement in terms significant of the general high opinion in which his qualities were held. His short speeches recorded in the Journals of the House of Commons, thanking admirals and generals for their exploits during the great war, are models of dignified panegyric. These speeches were collected into one volume by Mr. John Rickman, Lord Colchester's secretary, and published in 1829.

Abbot's services as an ex-officio trustee of the British Museum had been so valuable that on his retirement from office the number of trustees was increased in order that he might be elected. The appointment of days for the free admission of the public, the opening of the library for the accommodation of students, and the purchase of almost all the collections that were added to it between the years 1802 and 1817, are due to his suggestions.

The five years immediately following his retirement from the speakership were devoted to the restoration of his health; and from 1819 to 1822 he travelled through the greater part of France and Italy, returning to England just before the reconstruction of the ministry consequent on the death of Lord Londonderry. During the next seven years he continued to take an active part in politics. He was a tory of the Sidmouth rather than the Pitt school. He was strongly opposed to the admission of the Roman catholics to parliament; and he has left us a very full account of the political negotiations

of 1827, adopting the strong anti-Canning view which distinguished all that section of the tories. On 6 Feb. 1829 he made his last speech in the House of Lords. He was then far from well; in the following month he became seriously ill. He lingered on through April, and died rather suddenly on 7 May, in the 72nd year of his age.

Shortly after his acceptance of the speakership, Abbot purchased the estate of Kidbrooke, in Sussex, which was his country retreat for the remainder of his life. Here he amused himself with planting and gardening, with drilling volunteers, and discharging the duties of a magistrate. He had married, in Dec. 1796, Miss Elizabeth Gibbes, eldest daughter of Sir Philip Gibbes, and was succeeded at his death by his eldest son Charles, who was postmaster-general in 1858, and, dying in 1867, was succeeded by the present Lord Colchester, the third peer.

Lord Colchester's Diary and Correspondence were published by his son in 1861; they extend over a period of thirty-four years, from 1795 to 1829, and are among the most valuable collections of the kind. The memoir by the editor is the principal source of information. A selection from Abbot's speeches on the Roman catholic question appeared in 1828, and the collection of his addresses to military and naval commanders, which have been already referred to, was published in 1829.

[Diary and Correspondence of Lord Colchester, by the second Lord Colchester, 3 vols. 1861; Life of Mr. Perceval, by Spencer Walpole, 1874; Manning's Lives of the Speakers; Annual Register, 1829.]

T. E. K.

ABBOT, GEORGE (1562-1633), archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Guildford on 29 Oct. 1562. His father, Maurice Abbot, was a clothworker of the town; his mother's maiden name was Alice March or Marsh; their cottage, the birthplace of the archbishop, was by the river's side, near to the bridge on the north side in St. Nicolas' parish,' and, after serving for some years in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an alehouse with the sign of 'The Three Mariners,' remained standing until 1864 (MURRAY'S Surrey, p. 74). Abbot's parents were staunch protestants; they had first embraced the truth of the Gospel in King Edward's days, and were persecuted for it in Queen Mary's reign (by Dr. Story of infamous memory), and notwithstanding all troubles and molestations continued constant in the profession of the truth till their death,' which took place within ten days of each other in September 1606. George was their second

son; their eldest was Robert, bishop of Salisbury; their sixth and youngest son, Maurice, became an eminent London merchant (FULLER'S Abel Redivivus, p.539). Singularly successful as were the careers of this happy ternion of brothers,' it was on George alone that the hopes of his family were from the first unmistakably set. Before his birth his mother had a curious dream, long remembered in his native town, prognosticating a great career for him, and news of the vision brought 'the best inhabitants of Guildford... to the christening of the child' (AUBREY, Miscellanies, ed. 1857, p. 58). Abbot received his early education at the free grammar school at Guildford, and was there bred up a scholar' (ibid.). When sixteen years old he entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1582 took the degree of B.A., and became a probationer fellow of his college on 29 Nov. 1583. In 1585 he proceeded M.A., and at the same time took holy orders. During eight succeeding years Abbot devoted himself to the study of theology, and to tutorial work in the university. In 1593 he received the degree of B.D., and four years later that of D.D.

Abbot rapidly won an academical reputation as a powerful preacher and efficient lecturer. His sermons at St. Mary's drew large congregations. In 1594 he began a course of lectures on the book of Jonah, continued at intervals for many years both winter and summer on Thursday mornings early,' and in 1597, presumably when he took the degree of D.D., he read publicly in the theological school at Oxford six theses, which were published in the following year. The book was entitled 'Quæstiones sex totidem prælectionibus in Schola Theologica Oxoniæ pro forma habitis discuss et disceptatæ anno 1597, in quibus e sacra Scriptura et Patribus, quid statuendum sit definitur,' and it was deemed worthy by Abraham Scultetus of republication at Frankfort in 1616. In this volume, as in all his published works, Abbot's theological position was forcibly enunciated. He had inherited from his parents a strong affection for the reformed faith; Oxford, as he knew it in his undergraduate days, was a puritan stronghold, and its tutors were steeped in the theology of Calvin and St. Augustine. It was thus that Abbot became 'stiffly principled' in puritan doctrines, and his views, cast in a dangerously narrow mould, took from his habitually gloomy and morose temperament a fanatical colouring. A natural horror of disorder distinguished him from the extreme section of the puritans, and made the separatists detestable to him. In questions of church government he was content to stand by episcopacy, but he saw

in bishops a superintending pastorate and no separate order of the ministry. He always forcibly advocated reasonable obedience to the crown and all duly constituted authority, but whenever the demands of loyalty conflicted with his sense of duty he did not hesitate to act in accordance with the latter.

Abbot's vehement support of the puritan position soon attracted the admiration of Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, ‘a special maintainer of the true religion,' who became chancellor of the university in 1591, and appointed Abbot his private chaplain soon afterwards. Five years later Oxford confirmed this mark of esteem. On 6 Sept. 1597, at the comparatively early age of thirty-five, Abbot was elected master of University College. According to Clarendon's unfriendly judgment, University was at the time 'one of the poorest colleges in Oxford,' and the learning sufficient for that province' small (History, i. 125, ed. 1849). But of Abbot's own learning there can be no genuine doubt, and the appointment gave him many opportunities of exhibiting its quality with effect. It was quickly followed by his nomination to the deanery of Winchester, in which he was installed on 6 March 1599-1600, and before the year was out Abbot was chosen vice-chancellor of the university. To Lord Buckhurst, who succeeded Lord Burghley as lord high treasurer in 1599, Abbot ascribed all these preferments, and he did not delay the expression of his gratitude. Writing to him on 10 Oct. 1600, Abbot spoke of his desire to let men understand with how honorable a regard your lordship hath been pleased now for diverse yeares to looke upon me, and of your lordship's owne disposition at every first occasion so to think on my preferment, as I had no reason in my conceit to looke for or in any way expect' (Dedication to Jonah, 1600). In 1603 and in 1605 he was twice reappointed to the vice-chancellorship.

Abbot put all his energy into his rapidly increasing work at Oxford. Although a strict disciplinarian his pupils remembered him with affection in after life. With a 'very towardly one' of them, Sir Dudley Digges, he remained on terms of the closest intimacy until his death. 'He calleth me father,' wrote Abbot in 1627, and I term his wife my daughter. His eldest son is my godson, and their children are in love accounted my grandchildren.' Another of his pupils, Sir George Savile, who married a sister of Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, left his son on his death to Abbot's guardianship. In 1599 he wrote for his pupils a useful geographical treatise-' a briefe description of the whole world'—which

included an account of America, and was repeatedly reprinted, a fifth edition appearing in 1664. About the same time he concluded his lectures on Jonah, which received very general commendation, and he published them in London in 1600 with a dedication to Lord Buckhurst; in 1613 they reached a second edition. Their occasional digressions into topics of general interest, like the prospects of protestantism in France, explain much of their popularity. (A reprint of the work appeared in 1845, edited, with a life of the author, by Grace Webster.) Throughout the university Abbot at the same time kept strict order as vice-chancellor. He caused a number of religious pictures, which he regarded as incentives to idolatry, to be burnt in the market-place of the town, and on 27 April 1601 he reported to the chancellor how he had arrested one Abraham Colfe, B.A., of Christ Church, for publicly in the hall making a very offensive declaration in the cause of the late Earl of Essex.' But in his official capacity Abbot was also summoned to take part in the theological controversies raging outside the university. The citizens of London, who were mainly puritan in feeling, were in 1600 at feud with Richard Bancroft, their bishop, and Abbot with the vice-chancellor of Cambridge was called on to arbitrate in the dispute. Its origin was comparatively simple. A crucifix that had long stood in Cheapside had fallen down, and the bishop had ordered its re-erection. To this the citizens had demurred, and Abbot's opinion on the matter was invited. He unhesitatingly condemned the renovation of the crucifix; 'if,' he said, 'a monument was required in Cheapside, let an obelisk be set up there.' But, with his characteristic hatred of unruliness, he discouraged the citizens from taking the law into their own hands (Letter to the Citizens of London, 1600). In the result Abbot's advice was rejected, and a plain stone cross took the place of the crucifix. But his remarks, which threw him into disfavour with Bancroft, attracted much attention. The cross in Cheap is going up,' wrote Chamberlain to Carleton (3 Feb. 1600-1), 'for all your vice-chancellor of Oxford and some other odd divines have set down their censure against it' (CHAMBERLAIN's Letters, Camd. Soc., p. 102). And in 1602, when Abbot preached in London at the Temple Church, one of his hearers testified to his assured reputation by entering notes of the sermon in his diary (MANNINGHAM's Diary, Camd. Soc., pp. 126-7).

At Oxford, as in London, Abbot was not long able to maintain his cherished opinions unchallenged. Before the close of the six

teenth century there were signs of change in the religious atmosphere of the university, but Abbot's conservative tone of mind did not enable him readily to grasp their significance. John Buckeridge, the chief tutor of St. John's, had begun to brandish the sword of Scripture' against the puritans, and his pupil and later colleague, William Laud, eagerly followed in his footsteps. When Abbot was vice-chancellor in 1603, Laud was proctor, and a collision between the two theologians was inevitable. In a divinity lecture delivered at St. John's College in the preceding year Laud had asserted the perpetual visibility of the church of Christ derived from the apostles and the church of Rome, continued in that church (and in others of the east and south) to the Reformation." This was an admission of the beneficial influence of the papacy, against which Abbot rebelled. According to Heylin, Laud's friend and biographer, Abbot from that time 'conceived a strong grudge against [the preacher], which no tract of time could either abolish or diminish,' and certain it is that in 1603 he at once sharply reproved him and drew up a summary of his own views on this subject. It was Abbot's endeavour to show, by aid of much curious learning, how the noble worthies of the christian world,' among whom he only numbered opponents of the papacy like Waldo, Wycliffe, Huss, and Luther, after they had finished their course, delivered the lamp of their doctrine from one to another.' The pamphlet was widely circulated in manuscript, and was unfortunately published by an anonymous admirer in 1624, when Laud was in a position to use it to the injury of Abbot's reputation with the king and the Duke of Buckingham (LAUD's Diary, in his Works, iii. 145). It appeared, however, without Abbot's name, but with his arms-three pears impaled with the arms of the see of Canterbury-engraved on the titlepage. This is probably the work of Abbot's popularly called in error Look beyond Luther' (H. SAVAGE, Balliofergus, p. 114). But the early quarrels with Laud did not cease here. In 1606, when Dr. Henry Airay, provost of Queen's and a friend of Abbot's, was vice-chancellor, Laud was openly reprimanded for a sermon preached at St. Mary's, as containing in it sundry scandalous and popish passages.' And Abbot, according to Laud's sympathisers, brought all his influence to bear to the injury of the offender. so violently persecuted the poor man, and so openly branded him for a papist, or at least very popishly inclined, that it was often made an heresy (as I have heard from his own mouth) for any one to be seen in his

He