BLACKWELL, ELIZABETH (fl. 1737), wife of Alexander Blackwell [q. v.], is positively asserted by James Bruce (Lives of Eminent Men of Aberdeen, p. 307) to have been the daughter of a stocking merchant in Aberdeen, and to have eloped with her husband to London before he found employment as a corrector of the press. No authority is given for these statements. Blackwell's biographer in the 'Bath Journal,' who seems to write with a knowledge of the family, asserts on the other hand that the marriage took place subsequently, and describes Elizabeth as ' a virtuous gentlewoman, the daughter of a worthy merchant,' who gave his daughter a handsome portion. ' Virtuous ' and ' worthy ' were unquestionably epithets applicable to Elizabeth herself, who extricated her husband from his pecuniary difficulties by applying her talent for painting to the delineation of medicinal plants with the colours of nature. She was encouraged by Sir Hans Sloane, Dr. Mead, and Mr. Rand, curator of the botanical garden at Chelsea. By his advice she took lodgings close by the garden, where she was supplied with plants, which she depicted with extreme skill and fidelity, while Blackwell himself supplied the scientific and foreign nomenclature, and, with the original author's consent, abridged the descriptions in Philip Miller's ' Botanicum Officinale.' After finishing the drawings, Elizabeth engraved them on copper herself, and coloured the prints with her own hands. The work at length appeared in 1737, in 2 vols. folio, under the title of ' A Curious Herbal, containing five hundred cuts of the most useful plants which are now used in the practice of Physic.' It was accompanied by laudatory certificates from the College of Physicians and College of Surgeons, and dedications to Drs. Mead, Pellet, and Stuart. As a monument of female devotion it is most touching and admirable, and its practical value was very great. 'If,' says a writer in Chalmers's 'Dictionary,' 'there is wanting that accuracy which modern improvements have rendered necessary in delineating the more minute parts; yet, upon the whole, the figures are sufficiently distinctive of the subject.' Rousseau complains of its want of method, but it was not designed to accompany treatises on botany. Its merits received the most substantial recognition from the fine republication undertaken by Trew (Nüremberg, 1757-73), with the addition of a sixth century of plants, and a preface pointing out its superiority to the more scientific work of Morandi alike in accuracy and delicacy of colouring and in the copiousness of representations of exotic plants. Having performed her task of delivering her husband and temporarily re-establishing his affairs, Elizabeth Blackwell disappears from observation. According to the contemporary pamphlet on her husband's execution, she was then in England, but had been upon the point of joining him in Sweden. The date of her death is not recorded. She must have left children if, as has been stated, descendants from her exist at the present day.
[Gent. Mag. vol. xvii.; Chalmers's Dict.; Bruce's Eminent Men of Aberdeen, 1841.]
BLACKWELL, GEORGE (1545?–1613), archpriest, was born in Middlesex in or about 1545. A secular priest, in a controversial letter addressed to him, says: 'Your father was indeed a pewterer by Newgate in London, a man of honest occupation it is most true, but not the best neighbour to dwell by.' He was admitted scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, 27 May 1562, graduated B.A. in 1563, became probationer of his college in 1565, perpetual fellow in the following year, and M.A. in 1567. 'But his mind being more addicted to the catholic than to the reformed religion he left his fellowship and retired to Gloucester Hall for a time, where he was held in good repute by Edm. Rainolds and Thomas Allen, the two learned seniors' (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 122). Leaving the university he went over to the English college at Douay, where he was admitted in 1574, and being already far advanced in learning was ordained priest in 1575. He took the degree of B.D. the same year in the university of Douay, and returned to England upon the mission in November 1576.
As early as 1578 he was in prison (Douay Diaries, 147). To this occasion perhaps the secular priest already mentioned refers when he says: 'About twenty years since, to my remembrance, you were imprisoned in London: but your brother, being the bishop of London's register, procured your release very shortly after.' Blackwell lodged for seven or eight years in the house of Mrs. Meany in Westminster, and was constantly in fear of arrest and imprisonment. Once he owed his deliverance from impending danger to the intervention of the Countess of Arundel and Surrey, whose anonymous biographer informs us that he being forced for his own and the gentlewoman's security he liv'd with to hide himself in a secret place of the house when search was made after [him] by the hereticks: and being in great danger of being taken or famish'd by reason that all the catholicks of the house were carry'd away to prison, and heretick watchmen put into the house to keep it and hinder any from helping him. She
