ford, where he matriculated on 6 June 1738. He graduated B.A. on 13 May 1742, M.A. on 28 March 1745, B.C.L. on 20 Nov. 1752, and D.C.L. on 24 Nov. 1752. At Oxford Markham acquired the reputation of being one of the best scholars of his time. His ‘Judicium Paridis’ was published in the second volume of Vincent Bourne's ‘Musæ Anglicanæ,’ 1741, pp. 277–82, while several other specimens of his Latin verse, which appeared in the second volume of ‘Carmina Quadragesimalia,’ Oxford, 1748, 8vo, were collected and privately printed in 1819 and 1820 by Francis Wrangham under the same title. Markham appears to have been undecided for some years as to what profession he should follow. In 1753 he was offered the post of head-master of Westminster School, in succession to John Nicoll, which after some hesitation he decided to accept. Jeremy Bentham, who was at Westminster from 1755 to 1760, thus describes his head-master: ‘Our great glory was Dr. Markham; he was a tall, portly man, and “high he held his head.” He married a Dutch woman, who brought him a considerable fortune. He had a large quantity of classical knowledge. His business was rather in courting the great than in attending to the school. Any excuse served his purpose for deserting his post. He had a great deal of pomp, especially when he lifted his hand, waved it, and repeated Latin verses. If the boys performed their tasks well it was well, if ill, it was not the less well. We stood prodigiously in awe of him; indeed he was an object of adoration’ (Works of Jeremy Bentham, 1843, x. 30). Markham was appointed chaplain to George II in 1756, and prebendary of Durham on 22 June 1759. In the face of a good deal of opposition he obtained a bill in 1755 empowering him and Thomas Salter ‘to build houses and open a square in and upon’ Dean's Yard, Westminster (28 Geo. II, c. 54), and in 1758 the first classical scenes used in the representation of the Westminster Play were presented by him to the school.
In a letter to the Duke of Bedford, dated 14 Sept. 1763, Markham complained of ill-health, which made his ‘attendance on the school very painful’ to him, and asked for assistance in obtaining crown preferment (Correspondence of John, fourth Duke of Bedford, 1846, iii. 247–8; see also pp. 273–7). He retired from the head-mastership, on his appointment to the deanery of Rochester, in February 1765, and in the same year was presented to the vicarage of Boxley, Kent. In October 1767 he was nominated dean of Christ Church, Oxford, when he resigned the deanery of Rochester. Markham succeeded Edmund Keene as bishop of Chester, and was consecrated on 17 Feb. 1771 at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. He thereupon resigned his Kentish living and his prebendal stall at Durham, but continued to hold the deanery of Christ Church in commendam until his promotion to York. Through the influence of his friend Lord Mansfield, Markham was appointed preceptor to the young Prince of Wales and Prince Frederick, bishop of Osnaburg, on 12 April 1771 (Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, 1845, iv. 311), but was suddenly dismissed from this post in May 1776 (Walpole, Journal of the Reign of George III, 1859, ii. 49–52; see also the Political Memoranda of Francis, fifth Duke of Leeds, Camd. Soc. Publ. 1884, pp. 5–9). In January 1777 he was translated to the archiepiscopal see of York, appointed lord high almoner, and sworn a member of the privy council. On 30 May 1777 Markham replied ‘with great warmth’ to the attacks made upon him by the Duke of Grafton and Lord Shelburne for preaching doctrines subversive of the constitution (Parl. Hist. xix. 327, 328, 347–8). According to Walpole he is said to have declared on this occasion that ‘though as a Christian and a bishop he ought to bear wrongs, there were injuries which would provoke any patience, and that he, if insulted, should know how to chastise any petulance’ (Journal of the Reign of George III, 1859, ii. 119). These ‘pernicious’ doctrines, which Chatham subsequently denounced in the House of Lords (Parl. Hist. xix. 491), were contained in a sermon preached by Markham in the parish church of St. Mary-le-Bow, before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, on 21 Feb. 1777 (London, 4to). Markham seems to have been unable to forget this attack, and was one of the four peers who signed the protest against the third reading of the Chatham Annuity Bill on 2 June 1778 (Rogers, Complete Collection of the Protests of the House of Lords, 1875, ii. 177–8). While on his way to the House of Lords on 2 June 1780 Markham was attacked by the protestant petitioners, and subsequently hearing of Lord Mansfield's danger he flew down from the committee room in which he was sitting, ‘rushed through the crowd, and carried off his friend in Abraham's bosom’ (Walpole, Letters, vii. 384). His town house at that period adjoined Lord Mansfield's in Bloomsbury Square, and in a letter to his son John, Markham gives a graphic description of the attack on Lord Mansfield's house by the Gordon rioters, and of his own narrow escape from the violence of the mob (History of the Markham Family, pp. 60–5). Markham was
