[General Register of the Honourable East India Company’s Civil Servants on the Bengal Establishment from 1790 to 1842, by the Hon. H. T. Prinsep, India Office; Marshman's History of India (1867), iii. 47, 48; Bird’s Report on the Settlement of the North-West Provinces, 1859; Fouith Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Territories, 1853; Minutes of Evidence; private letters.]
BIRD, SAMUEL (fl. 1600), divine, was a native of Essex, and matriculated as a pensioner of Queens’ College, Cambridge, in June 1566. He proceeded B.A. 1569-70, and commenced M.A. 1573. In November 1573 he was elected a fellow of Corpus Christi College, being admitted 30 April 1574. He vacated his fellowship in or belore 1576. He must also have been fellow of Benet College, as his earliest title-page shows: ‘A friendlie Communication or dialogue between Paule and Demos, wherein is disputed how we are to vse the pleasures of this life. By Samuel Byrd, M,A,, and fellow not long since of Benet Colledge,’ 1580.
It is further known that Bird was minister of St. Peter's, Ipswich, which was at the time a perpetual curacy, very poorly endowed. Unfortunately the church-books at present extant date back only to 1667, whilst a list of the incumbents from the year 1604 commences with his successor. His perpetual curacy he must have filled for a quarter of a century-say 1580 to 1604. He vacated the living in 1604. It must have been by cession or resignation, as in 1604 he was admitted a student at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and on 8 May 1605 was incorporated M.A. in that university. Nothing is known of him at a later date.
In Bacon’s MSS. belonging to the corporation of Ipswich, which date 16 July 1595 (38 Elizabeth), is the following entry:-
‘Exhibition of a poore scholler. Petition for exhibition for hir. Bird’s sonne at Cambridge. It's ordered the gift of Mr. Barney shall he considered and what money is laid out, and thereuppon order shall farther be madef Then, on 14 Aug, (same year): ‘It was ordered by the Great Court that 4 li. shall be given yearly to Samuel Bird, sonne of Mr. Bird, minister of St. Peter's, at Cambridge, to his maintenance in learning till 20 li. be laid out.'
Besides ‘A Friendlie Communication, published in 1580, Bird issued 'The Principles of the True Christian Peligion briefly selected out of many good books. By S. B. 1590; ‘The Lectvres of Samvel Bird of Ipswidge vpon the 8 and 9 chapters of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians,’ 1598; ‘The Lectvres of Samvel Bird of Ipswidge vpon the 11 chapter of the Epistle: unto the Hebrewes, and upon the 38 Psalme,' 1598 (an edition of 1594 is also recorded). The ‘Hebrewes’ is dedicated to M. Edward Bacon of Shrubland Hall. Finally Bird published ‘Lectvres . . . on the Seventh Chapter of the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians,' 1598.
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses, ii. 429-30; Cole MSS. (B. Museum), B. 128; Hunter's MS. Chorus Vatum in Brit. Mus.; Herbert’s Ames, 1011, 1357, 1426; Lowmdes (Bohn); Masters's History of C. C. C. C. (Lamb), 326; Woods Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 307; communications from Rev. Alexander Jeffrey, Ipswich.]
BIRD, WILLIAM, musician. [See Byrd.]
BIRDSALL, JOHN AUGUSTINE (1775–1837), president-general of the Benedictines in England, was born at Liverpool 27 June 1775. His father, a well-to-do grocer, sent him at an early age to the Dominican College of Bornhem in Flanders. He entered himself among the Benedictines at Lamspringe in Hanover in October 1795. He was there admitted to his solemn profession 6 Nov. 1796. On 30 May 1801 he was ordained priest at Hildesheim in Westphalia. During September 1802 he was appointed prefect of the students at Lamspringe, where Peter Baines [q. v.], afterwards bishop was one of his pupil's. On the suppression of the abbey of Lamspringe by the Prussians, 3 Jan. 1803, Father Birdsall had to return hurriedly to England. After remaining for a while at St. Lawrence's College, Ampleforth, he was sent on the mission in the south, or, as it was still called, the Canterbury province of the Benedictine order in this country. On 30 May 1806 he arrived at Bath, whither he had been despatched to assist the incumbent of St. John the Evangelist, where the Benedictines had long been established. In October 1809 he left, in order to establish a new mission at Cheltenham, and on 3 June 1810 opened the first catholic chapel known there since the Reformation. A French refugee, the Abbé Alexandre Cæsar, who had been saying mass on Sundays and holy days in the back room of a low public house, died in his eightieth year on 24 Sept. 1811. Many obstacles to the foundation of the mission were overcome by the untiring zeal of Father Birdsall. He remained in active charge of the mission for twenty-five years altogether. Twenty years after his arrival in Cheltenham he established a new mission at Broadway, in Worcestershire. On 15 May 1828 he began there the new chapel of St. Saviour's Retreat. That mission in
