Mr. Brooke, a well-regulated economist, had acquired about £14,000. GEORGE III. Heralds. By his will he appointed his two sisters executrixes, and residuary legatees, though his elder brother, Mr. Brooke, an attorney, survived him. He be- Somerset. queathed his MSS. to the College of Arms. That which related to the lives of the heralds he had promised me the inspection of, and this his friends in the College most obligingly fulfilled since his death. Somerset's merit will always be acknowledged. He made many collections, chiefly relative to the county of York. His father inheriting the MS. of his great uncle, the Rev. John Brooke, which he had made as a foundation for the topography of that great division of the kingdom, they came into his hands, which he greatly enlarged by his own industry, and by copying the manuscripts of Jennings and Tellyson, which treated upon the same subject. His collections were not confined to Britain; but he added much to his literary labors whilst on a tour to the Continent. The whole shew his judgment as well as application. Becoming, April 6, 1775, a member of the Society of Antiquaries, he enriched their volumes with some curious papers relative to the ancient seal of Robert, Baron Fitzwalter, and those of Queens Catharine Parr and Mary d'Este : illustrations of a Saxon inscription in Kirkdale church, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and another in Aldborough church, in Holderness; and of a deed belonging to the manor of Nether-Sillington, in Yorkshire. Some items of his, signed J.B., appear in the Gentleman's Magazine, and the first writers of the age in history, biography, and topography, are indebted to him. The obliging manner of his sending information augmented the value : his greatest pleasure was making others happy. It was hoped he would have given us the great seals of our Sovereigns, their consorts, and those of the royal family, the nobility, prelates, religious houses, and other public bodies. None could so well have done what is much wanted. The late Sir George Warren, K.B., supposing he had a claim to the barony of Warren, vested in the ancient Earls of Warren in Normandy, created by William the Conqueror Earls of Surrey, whose arms he bore, with the addition of a canton, employed the Rev. Mr. Watson, to whom he gave the rectory of Stockport, in Cheshire, and Somerset, to compile a regular history of those earls, and to unite his descent to them, in the manner such works were accustomed to be performed by the nobility in France. The work made two large quarto volumes. The sheets were dispersed to the intelligent to augment or correct. The matter however was discontinued. This was caused by the Kkk GEORGE III. the deaths of the compilers, and Sir George's ill health. Mr. Basire's burine Heralds. Richmond. was employed in ornamenting and elucidating the subject with appropriate plates. The expense, considerable as it was, could not have been felt by the employer. It would have been an acceptable present to the Public. It is extraordinary that such works are not often written under the patronage, and for the honor of illustrious families in Britain. How much larger sums are often spent in a less praise-worthy manner. March 1, 1794.- JOHN ATKINSON; Esq. The present Somerset herald. RICHMOND. Geo. 11.-FRANCIS GROSE, Esq. F.A.S. He was son of Francis Grose, Esq. a native of Switzerland, who settling in England, became so eminent a jeweller, that he was employed in fitting up the crown for the coronation of George II. Retiring from business, he resided at Richmond, and became a justice of peace for the county of Surrey. Dying in December, 1769, his prints and shells were disposed of in the following year. By Ann, daughter of Thomas Bennett of Kingston, in Oxfordshire, he had the herald and several other sons; they were, Mr. John Grose, F.A.S. author of "Ethics." John-Henry Grose, Esq. who wrote the Voyage to the East-Indies, printed in 1772, in two volumes, father of Daniel Grose Esq. F.A.S. captain of the royal regiment of artillery. Edward Grose Esq. a merchant in Threadneedle Street; and Sir Nash Grose, justice of the King's Bench. Francis Grose, Esq. Richmond, the eldest son, born at Greenford, in Middlesex, having a taste for heraldry and antiquities, his father procured him a place in the College of Arms. At his death he left him a fortune, which, with economy, was sufficient to have supplied all reasonable demands; but eccentric, easy, a lover and promoter of pleasantry, he never reflected about contingencies. Resigning his tabard in 1763, he became adjutant and paymaster of the Hampshire militia; here he found others equally disposed to frolic and mirth; his moments passed pleasantly: the only books of account he kept, as he used to own, were his right and left hand pockets; into the one he put what he received; from the other he paid: the designing, and the careless, regarded him as their dupe, and he soon felt the effects of his easy credulity. He found resources in his gave his excellent classical education, and his fine taste for drawing; this tory of the English Army, from the Conquest to the present Time," in two copper GEORGE III. Heralds. Richmond. : Heralds. Richmond. GEORGE III. " copper Plates, with an Essay on comic Painting." In 1789 he began his Scottish tour: the result of it appeared first in 1790. Before the whole was completed he went to Ireland, which was to be viewed as the sister kingdoms, and its antiquities, comprized in forty numbers, in the same sizes as his other works of that kind, were to be given; but, when only in the fiftysecond year of his age, he was carried off by an apoplectic stroke, May 12, 1791, in the house of Mr. Hone, in Dublin *. Since his death a small 8vo. volume of miscellaneous Subjects were published, by the late Mr. John Williamson, from which I have given the lives of Warburton, Somerset, and Oldys, Norroy. It is wonderful that he was able to publish so much, and that generally so excellent. Besides these extensive works he drew the new plates in Mr. Martin's History of Thetford, 1779. Mr. William Flackton, bookseller at Canterbury, and Miss Gosling of that city, have many of his drawings taken whilst he resided there, which he did for some years, having married a lady of that place. Cromwell, the vicar-general, the furious fanatical reformer, Knox, and Oliver Cromwell, the Protector, were founders of his celebrity, by destroying the ecclesiastical and military structures of our ancestors; but the hand of time had prepared them for Grose's pencil, by fracturing the walls, and rearing upon and around them the ivy, the moss, and the shrub. There is an original miniature portrait of him, drawn from the life, by Dr. Bruce, then surgeon of a regiment of foot, in the possession of Mr. Flackton, who long knew and highly esteemed him; it represents him sitting in a chair, in his military uniform, and was esteemed, when taken twenty-seven years before his death, a very striking likeness. There is a whole-length portrait of him by Dance, engraved by Bartolozzi, which is prefixed to the Supplement to his English Antiquities, vol. 1. There are others; an excellent one in the character of a jolly monk, with friends Hone and Forrest; another, equally good, by a well known gentleman artist, "cordially inscribed to those members of the Antiquarian Society who "adjourn to the Somerset, by one of their devoted brethren," with the lamp, and "the following lines under it;" this being handed about gave Mr. Grose much displeasure. Now * Grose's Antiquities of England, Wales, and Scotland, uniformly printed, sells for £31. 10s. Now *****, like bright Phœbus, is sunk into rest, Another, styled "The English Antiquary," is amongst the caricature portraits of Mr. Ray, of Edinburgh. That in "The Lounger's Miscel"lany" was not designed for, though it well represents him. There is another which does not do justice to the subject it professes to represent. None more laughed at his figure than himself, and it being unique, could not be mistaken; he often signed not his names to his letters, but sketched his person. How inimitable has that sweet bard, the unfortunate Burne, portrayed the man, when larding the lean earth in his perambulations in that kingdom. Grose, to a stranger, might have been supposed not a surname, but one selected as significant of his figure: which was more of the form of Sancho Pança than Falstaff; he partook greatly of the properties of both. He was as low, squat and rotund as the former, and not less a sloven; equalled him too in his love of sleep, and nearly so in his proverbs. In his wit he was a Falstaff. He was the butt for other men to shoot at, but it always rebounded with a double force. He could eat with Sancho, and drink with the Knight. In simplicity, probity, and a compassionate heart, he was wholly of the Pança breed; his jocularity could have pleased a prince. His learning, sense, science, and honor, might have secured him the favor, not the rejection, of the all-accomplished conqueror of France. - My personal knowledge of the original enables me to vouch for the justness of the character I have drawn. In the "St. James's Evening" was proposed, as an epitaph for him, the following appropriate words: "Here lies FRANCIS Grose. Mr. Grose, I believe, chiefly resided at Wandsworth, in Surrey: he married the beautiful Catherine, daughter of Mr. Jordan, of Canterbury, by George III. Heralds. Richmond. |