the Royal Society of Musicians. Festing, Weidemann, the king's flute-master, and Vincent, the oboist, standing at the door of the Orange coffee-house in the Haymarket, saw two children driving milch asses. They turned out to be the children of a German oboe-player named Kytch, who after some temporary success had died in extreme poverty. The musicians, after consulting with Dr. Maurice Greene, an intimate friend of Festing's, started a subscription, by means of which the Royal Society of Musicians was established, on 19 April 1738, for the relief of indigent musicians and their families. The list of original members includes the names of all the notable musicians of the day, among others that of Handel, whose ‘Messiah’ is still annually performed for the benefit of the institution. From Festing's generosity on this occasion, from the fact that he published his compositions on his own account (Hawkins, History, ed. 1853, p. 801), and still more from his having discharged without any remuneration the duties of secretary to the society he had helped to found, it is fairly certain that he was in easy circumstances. He had a brother, John, an oboe-player, who amassed some 8,000l., chiefly by teaching. According to one account the oboe-player was the original of Hogarth's ‘Enraged Musician’ (ib. p. 892). Festing died on 24 July 1752, leaving a son, the Rev. Michael Festing, who married the only daughter of Dr. Greene. He was rector of Wyke Regis, Dorsetshire. Festing's musical property was sold two months after his death. Burney says that ‘with a feeble hand, little genius for composition, and but a shallow knowledge in counterpoint, by good sense, probity, prudent conduct, and a gentlemanlike behaviour [Festing] acquired a weight and influence in his profession, at which had hardly any musician of his class ever arrived;’ and John Potter, in his ‘Observations upon the Present State of Music,’ 1762, says that he ‘deserves praise and esteem as a composer of great merit.’
[Grove's Dict. i. 515; Pohl's Mozart in London; Potter's Observations, &c., p. 59; Hawkins's History, quoted above; Burney, iv. 649, 663, 668; John Parry's Account of the Royal Society of Musicians, prefixed to a programme of the ‘Messiah,’ for a performance in 1858; Gent. Mag. xxii. 337; Somerset House Gazette (1824), i. 84.]
FETHERSTON, RICHARD (d. 1540), Catholic martyr, was chaplain to Queen Catherine of Arragon, and schoolmaster to her daughter Mary, afterwards queen. Pits styles him 'sacrae theologiae doctor,' but there is no record of his having taken a degree, either in Wood's 'Athenae Oxonienses' or in Cooper's 'Athenae Cantabrigienses.' He sat in the convocation which commenced in April 1528, and was one of the small minority who refused to sign the declaration that Henry VIII's marriage with Catherine was illegal, on the ground that the pope had no power of dispensation in such a case. After the passing of the Act of Supremacy he refused to take the oath enjoined in thereby, and was in consequence committed to the Tower on 13 Dec. 1531. On 30 July 1540 he was hanged, headed, and quartered at Smithfield, together with Dr. Barnes, Garret, Jerome, Powell, and Abel. He wrote a treatise, 'Contra divortium Henrici et Catherini.'
[Cal. State Papers. Hen. VIII. vi, 311, 1199, vii. 214 n., viii, 868, 1001; Foxe, v. 438; Pits, p. 729; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. Hib. p.278; Grafton's Chronicle, i. 474; Wriothesley's Chronicle, f. 120, 121.]
FETHERSTONHAUGH, Sir TIMOTHY (d. 1651), royalist, was son of Henry Fetherstonhaugh of Kirkoswald, Cumberland, high sheriff of that county 10 James I, who was second son of Albany Fetherstonhaugh of Fetherstonhaugh, Northumberland, by his wife Lucy, daughter of Edmund Dudley of Yanwath, Westmoreland. His mother was Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Wybergh of Clifton, Westmoreland (Pedigrees in Hutchinson, Cumberland, i. 207; Burke, Landed Gentry, 7th edit., i. 633). In 1620 he was admitted a member of Gray's Inn (Harl. MS. 1912, f. 31). He was knighted at Whitehall 1 April 1628. During the civil war he liberally contributed money to the royal cause, raised troops at his own expense, and served in the field. In 1642 he marched with Sir William Hudleston to Charles at York, having under him three hundred foot. In February 1644 he left Oxford with introductions from the king and Lord Digby for Ireland, where he applied to Ormonde to send troops for the relief of Cumberland (Carte, Ormonde (1851), v. 12, vi. 248). At the battle of Wigan Lane, Lancashire, 26 Aug. 1651, he was taken prisoner, and after trial by court-martial at Chester he was beheaded in that city, 22 Oct., despite his plea that he had quarter for life given him (Carte, Hist. of England, iv. 652). He married Bridget, daughter of Thomas Patrickson of Caswell-How in Ennerdale, Cumberland. Two of his sons were slain at the battle of Worcester 3 Sept. 1651; the elder, Henry, had been knighted on the field there. The family's losses amounted, it is said, to 10,000l. In June 1661 two other sons, Philip and John, were obliged to petition for places as pages to the queen ‘to lessen the charges of their
