Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/14

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resumed. The archbishop informed him that the king desired to know if he would conform, but he declined to give a promise. Hereupon the archbishop told him he had a charge to depose him. But Patrick Forbes [q. v.], bishop of Aberdeen, interposed, offering to take Forrester's deposition into his own hands. ‘For this,’ said he, ‘I must needs say that though he be not yet fully resolved, yet he is somewhat more tractable than when he came to us, and though he stand on his own conscience, as every good Christian should do, yet is he as modest, and subject to hear reason, as the youngest scholar in Scotland.’

Forrester was thus obliged to betake himself north to Aberdeen, where Bishop Forbes placed him in the church of Rathven, to which he was admitted on 20 April 1620. Here, however, he signalised himself by his energetic measures against the papists, and James VI again gave orders for a process being laid against him. Through the influence of his wife's cousin, Sir William Alexander [q. v.] of Menstrie, afterwards first earl of Stirling, this was averted, and he was restored to his former charge as ‘minister of the word of God at the north side of the bridge of the town of Leith,’ on 20 Sept. 1627. He died there in June 1633, in the forty-fifth year of his age and twenty-fourth of his ministry. He was twice married: first, on 30 Jan. 1614, to Margaret Paterson of Stirling, by whom he had three sons, Duncan, John, and George; secondly, to Margaret, daughter of Robert Hamilton, brother of the Laird of Preston. Duncan, Forrester's eldest son, was one of the regents in the university of Edinburgh, and was served heir to his father on 13 Nov. 1633.

[Calderwood's Hist. vii. 379, 380, 407, 627; Row's Hist. pp. 323, 350; Scott's Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, i. 93, 94, iv. 698; Abbreviate of the Retours of Stirling, Nos. 125, 138, 145, &c.]

H. P.

FORRESTER, JOSEPH JAMES, Baron de Forrester in Portugal (1809–1861), merchant and wine shipper, born at Hull 27 May 1809 of Scotch parentage, went to Oporto in 1831 to join his uncle, James Forrester, partner in the house of Offley, Forrester, & Webber. He early devoted himself to the interests of his adopted country, and a laborious survey of the Douro, with a view to the improvement of its navigation, was one of the principal occupations of the first twelve years of his residence. The result was the publication in 1848 of a remarkable map of the river from Vilvestre on the Spanish frontier to its mouth at St. João da Foz on a scale of 4½ inches to the Portuguese league. Its merit was universally recognised, commendatory resolutions were voted by the Municipal Chamber of Oporto, the Agricultural Society of the Douro, and other public bodies, while its adoption as a national work by the Portuguese government gave it the stamp of official approbation. It was supplemented by a geological survey and by a separate map of the port wine districts, reprinted in England in 1852 by order of a select committee of the House of Commons.

In 1844 Forrester published anonymously a pamphlet on the wine trade, entitled ‘A Word or two on Port Wine,’ of which eight editions were rapidly exhausted. This was the first step in his endeavours to obtain a reform of the abuses practised in Portugal in the making and treatment of port wine, and the remodelling of the peculiar legislation by which the trade was regulated. To these abuses and to the restrictions enforced by the Douro Wine Company in right of a monopoly created in 1756 he attributed the depression in the port wine trade. The taxation on export imposed by this body was exceedingly heavy, while an artificial scarcity was created by the arbitrary limitation of both the quantity and quality allowed to be exported. The author of the pamphlet was easily identified and bitterly attacked by the persons interested. The inhabitants of the wine country, however, supported him warmly, and he received addresses of thanks from 102 parishes of the Upper Douro.

The prize of 50l. offered by Mr. Oliveira, M.P., in 1851 for the best essay on Portugal and its commercial capabilities was awarded to Baron de Forrester for an admirable treatise, which went through several editions and is still a standard work. In 1852 he gave valuable evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons on the wine duties, detailing at greater length all the abuses summarised in his pamphlet. He continued to write on this and other practical subjects, publishing tracts on the vine disease, improved manufacture of olive oil, &c., and was awarded by the commissioners of the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855 the silver medal of the first class and five diplomas of honourable mention for the collection of publications and products he there exhibited.

On 12 May 1861 the boat in which he was descending the Douro was swamped in one of the rapids, and he was drowned. The body was never found. The ships in Lisbon and Oporto hoisted their colours half-mast high on receipt of the news, and all public buildings showed similar signs of mourning. In