missed by all three. Blackburne’s rise in the church was originally due to the patronage of Bishop Trelawny, but it was probably accelerated through his marriage, at the Savoy Chapel, 2 Sept. 1684, with Catherine, daughter of William Talbot, of Stourton Castle, Staffordshire, and widow of Walter Littleton of Lichfield. From her brother, William Talbot, bishop of Durham, father of lord-chancellor Talbot, is descended the present Earl of Shrewsbury, and her issue by her first husband was a direct ancestor of Lord Teynham. She was older than the archbishop, and predeceased him. He died at a time of extreme cold, 23 March 1743, and was buried at St. Margaret's, Westminster, on 1 April.
Archbishop Blackburne was gay and witty. His enemies repeated the story that he acted as chaplain on board one of the ships engaged in buccaneering, and that he shared the booty, the joke running that one of the buccaneers on his arrival in England asked what had become of his old chum Blackburne, and was answered that he was archbishop of York. The freeness of his manners is shown by two anecdotes: (1) That on a visitation at St. Mary's, Nottingham, he ordered pipes and tobacco and some liquor to be brought into the vestry ‘for his refreshment after the fatigue of confirmation;’ whereupon the vicar, Mr. Disney, remonstrated with the archbishop for his conduct, and, with the remark that the vestry should not be turned into a smoking-room, forbad their introduction. (2) That he applauded the conduct of Queen Caroline in not objecting to the king’s new mistress. It was at one time insinuated that Francis Blackburne, the archdeacon [q. v.], was a natural son of the archbishop, but this was a slander. Horace Walpole more than once asserted that Bishop Hayter of Norwich was an illegitimate son of the archbishop, but this assertion is refuted in the ‘Quarterly Review,' xxvii. 186, One of Walpole's sentences combines all the reckless charges which were repeated by the prelate’s slanderers: ‘The jolly old archbishop of York, who had all the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a buccaneer and was a clergyman; but he retained nothing of his first profession except his seraglio.' The popular opinion concerning the character of Blackburne’s life may be gathered from a poem entitled ‘Priestcraft and Lust, or Lancelot to his Ladies, an Epistle from the Shades,' 1743, fo. Hayter was one of Blackburne's executors, and with two Talbots was residuary legatee to the estate. In a charge to the clergy of the archdeaconry of York (1732) he pays a warm tribute to the archbishop, styling him ‘my indulgent benefactor.' Archbishop Blackburne was the author of a sermon in Latin to convocation, three sermons before Queen Anne, and one before the House of Commons. When Queen Caroline inquired whether Butler, the author of the ‘Analogy,’ was not dead, a ready remark of the witty prelate— ‘No, madam, he is not dead, but buried,' an allusion to his retirement at Stanhope-led to Butler’s appointment as clerk of the closet, and to the queen’s recommendation of him to Archbishop Potter when she was on her deathbed. A line engraving of the archbishop by Vertue, from a painting by Zeeman, is dated ‘Aged 68, 10 Dec. 1726.'
[Walpole's Last Ten Years of George II (1822), i. 75; Letters, i. 235, 250; Atterbury's Correspondence, i. 253; Bliss`s Wood, iv. 661; Rawlinson MSS. 4to, i. 299, Bodleian Library; Noble’s Continuation of Granger, iii. 68-9; Granger’s Letters, 199; Polwheele's Devon, i. 313; Life of F. Blackburne, i. p. viii (1805); Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ix. 226, 289, 396; Oliver's Bishops of Exeter, 161, 273, 277, 296; Bartlett`s Life of Bp. Butler, 38; We1ch’s Westminster Scholars, 178-9; Sir C. Hanbury Williams’s Works (1822), ii. 133-5.]
BLACKBURNE, RICHARD, M.D. (b. 1652), physician, was born in London in 1652, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of B.A. in 1669. ‘He was entered on the physic line at Leyden, 23 May 1676, being then twenty-four years of age, and he graduated doctor of medicine in that university (Munk's Roll, i. 451), where his thesis was published as ‘Disputatio medica inauguralis de Sanguificatione,' &c., 8vo, Lugduni Batavorum, 1676. About the year 1681 Dr. Blackburne co-operated with John Aubrey, who says that he was ‘one of the College of Physicians, and practiseth yearly at Tunbridge Wells,’ to bring into public repute for their curative properties the chalybeate springs discovered by Aubrey in 1666 at Seend near Devizes, and which Dr. Blackburne declared ‘to be of the nature and virtue of those at Tunbridge, and altogether as good;’ but ‘it was about 1688 before they became to be frequented’ (Britton, Memoir of Aubrey, p. 17). Blackburne was admitted an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 25 June 1685, and, being created a fellow of the college by the charter of King James II, was admitted as such at the extraordinary comitia of 12 April 1687, and was censor in 1688. The time of his death is unknown. Dr. Blackburne had a great regard and admiration for Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, and it is probable that he wrote the short Latin memoir sometimes re-
