Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/428

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Boscawen
420
Bosgrave

daughter of Henry Bankes, of Kingston Lacy, Dorset, whom he married on 27 Aug. 1810, survived until 1 May 1864. Lord Falmouth was the author of a pamphlet on the Stannary Courts, and was the last recorder of Truro. He built the present Tregothnan House. He was succeeded by his son, George Henry [see Boscawen, Family of, ad fin.]

[Bibl. Cornub. i., iii.; Gent. Mag:. (1842) (pt. i.), 208–9; Lord Colchester's Diary, iii. 467, 608–10; Smith's Cobbett, ii. 278-80; Lord Ellenborough's Diary, i. 13, 67, 255, 344, 351, 387, 403, ii. 7, 439 ; Burke's Peerage.]

W. P. C.


BOSCAWEN, HUGH (d. 1734), first Viscount Falmouth, the leading Cornish politician of his time in the whig interest, was the eldest son of Edward Boscawen, by Jael, daughter of Sir Francis Godolphin. The parliamentary representation of the boroughs of Tregony and Truro was under his absolute control, and he exercised considerable influence on the elections for Penryn. He sat for Tregony from 1702 to 1705, for the county of Cornwall from 1705 to 1710, for Truro from 1710 to 1713, and for Penryn from 1713 until June 1720. In the latter year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Boscawen and Viscount Falmouth, having been for some time discontented at the delay in his advancement to that position. Both before and after the accession of George I he spent large sums of money in support of whig principles, and was rewarded on his party's triumph by many valuable offices. He was a groom of the bedchamber to Prince George of Denmark, steward of the duchy of Cornwall and lord warden of the Stannaries in 1708, comptroller of the household from 1714 to 1720, and joint vice-treasurer of Ireland from 1717 until a few months before his death. He died suddenly at Trefusis, in Cornwall, on 25 Oct. 1734, and was buried at St. Michael Penkivel. His wife, to whom he was married in Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, on 23 April 1700, was the elder daughter and coheir of Colonel Charles Godfrey, master of the jewel office, by Arabella Churchill. She died on 22 March 1754, and was also buried at Penkivel. Lady Falmouth was very desirous of becoming a lady of the bedchamber to the wife of George II, and tried to bribe Lady Sundon into obtaining the post for her. Her letters on the subject will be found in Mrs. Thomson's 'Life of Lady Sundon,' ii. 310-19. Many satirical references to their son, the second Viscount Falmouth, will be found in the 'Catalogue of Satirical Prints at the British Museum,' iv. 685-6.

[Bibl. Cornub. i., iii.; Chester's Register of Westm. Abbey, 36; Diary of Countess Cowper, 118, 131; Graham's Lords Stair, ii. 28, 151; Lord Hervey's Memoirs (1884 ed.), i. 229–30, 333; C. S. Gilbert's Cornwall, i. 454.]

W. P. C.


BOSCAWEN, WILLIAM (1752–1811) author, younger son of General George Boscawen and Anne Trevor (vide pedigree in Mrs. Delany's Autobiography), and nephew of the admiral, Edward Boscawen [q.v.], was born 28 Aug. 1752, and was educated at Eton, where he is said to have been a great favourite of Dr. Barnard. He became a gentleman-commoner of Exeter College, Oxford, and on settling in London studied law under a Cornish lawyer, Mr. Justice Buller, about 1770, and went the western circuit. Boscawen published two or three law treatises, and was appointed a commissioner in bankruptcy. In 1785 he was made a commissioner of the Victualling Office. He was much attached to literary pursuits, and translated first the Odes, Epodes, and Carmen Seculare of Horace; then the Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry. He was much indebted for his notes to Dr. Foster, of Eton College. In 1792 he published a 'Treatise on Convictions on Penal Statutes,' and in 1798, 1800, and 1801 some original poems and other works. He was also a contributor to the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' and to the 'British Critic.' He died of asthma, at Little Chelsea, on 8 May 1811. By his wife, Charlotte Ibbetson, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Ibbetson, he had five daughters. He was of an affectionate and benevolent disposition, and the Literary Fund he considered almost as his own child, writing the annual verses for it till within five years of his death.

[Upcott's Original Letters, p. 43; Literary Memoirs of Living Authors, i. 61 (1798); Poetical Register for 1801, passim; The Sexagenarian, ii. 223; John Taylor's Records of my Life, i. 385, 388, ii. 397, 401; Literary Panorama for 1811; T. J. Mathias's Pursuit of Literature, p. 260; Tregellas's Cornish Worthies.]

W. H. T.


BOSGRAVE, JAMES (1547?–1623), Jesuit, was born at Godmanston, Dorsetshire, 'of a very worshipful house and parentage,' about 1547. He was probably a brother of Thomas Bosgrave, who suffered along with Father John Cornelius at Dorchester on 4 July 1594. He quitted England in his childhood; entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Rome on 17 Nov. 1564; and was ordained priest at Olmütz in Moravia in 1572. For twelve years he taught Greek, Hebrew, and mathematics at Olmütz, whence he was sent to Poland and eventually to Vilna in Lithu-