Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/47

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Mann
41
Mann

Champlain, with the communication down to St. John's, 2 sheets, 1791; (4) a drawn plan of Fort St. John on the river Chambly, 1791; (5) a drawn plan and sections of the new works proposed at St. John's, 1791.

The following drawn plans by Mann, formerly in the war office, are now among the records of the government of the dominion of Canada: (1) Plan of town and fortifications of Montreal, 1768; (2) Plan of Fort George, showing works of defence, n. d.; (3) Fort Erie, proposed work, n. d.; (4) Entrance of the Narrows between Lakes Erie and Detroit, n. d.; (5) St. Louis and Barrack bastions, with proposed works, and six sections, 1785; (6) Casemates proposed for forming a citadel, 1785; (7) Quebec and Heights of Abraham, with sections of works, 1785; (8) Military Ports, Lake Huron, Niagara, entrance of river to Detroit, Toronto Harbour, and Kingston Harbour, 1788; (9) Defences of Canada, 1788; (10) Position opposite Isle au Bois Blanc, 1796; (11) Isle aux Boix, and adjacent shores, showing present and proposed works, 2 sheets, 1797; (12) Works to be constructed at Amhurstburg, 1799; (13) Amhurstburgh and Isle au Bois Blanc, with works ordered to be constructed, 1799; (14) Ordnance Store House proposed for Cape Diamond Powder Magazine, 2 sheets, 1801; (15) City and Fortifications of Quebec with vicinity, 1804; (16) Citadel of Quebec, 2 sheets of sections, 1804; (17) Fortifications of Quebec, 1804.

[Connolly MSS.; Royal Engineers Records; Ordnance and War Office Records; Porter's History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, 1889; private manuscripts.]

R. H. V.


MANN, Sir HORACE (1701–1786), British envoy at Florence, born in 1701, was the second son of Robert Mann, a successful London merchant, who bought an estate at Linton in Kent, built 'a small but elegant seat on the site of the old mansion of Capell's Court,' and died a fully qualified country squire on 9 Sept. 1761. His mother was Eleanor, daughter and heiress of Christopher Guise of Abbot's Court, Gloucestershire. An elder brother, Edward Louisa, died in 1755, while of Horace's sisters, Catharine was married to the Hon. and Rev. James Cornwallis [q. v.], bishop of Lichfield, and Eleanor to Sir John Torriano, son of Nathaniel Torriano, a noted London merchant, and contributor to the 'British Merchant' [see King, Charles, fl. 1721], A first cousin was Cornelius Mann of Plumstead, father of Gother Mann [q. v.] The kinship with Horace Walpole which has frequently been claimed for Mann has no existence. He was, however, and associate of Walpole as a young man, and it was entirely owing to this intimacy that he was in 1737 offered by Sir Robert Walpole the post of assistant to 'Mr. Fane,' envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at the court of Florence. The grand dukedom of Tuscany had just passed to Francis of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, who in 1745 was elected emperor (Francis I), but the actual administration was in the hands of the Prince of Craon, Francis's quondam tutor, who had married a discarded mistress of his father, Duke Leopold. Croon and his wife are consequently 'the prince' and 'princess' to whom such frequent reference is made in Mann's letters of 1738–40, During this period he assiduously did the work of Fane, an indolent but most particular person, who is described by Walpole as taking to his bed for six weeks in consequence of the Duke of Newcastle's omitting on one occasion the usual prefix 'very' to 'your humble servant' in signing one of his letters. In 1740 Mann was rewarded by being formally appointed Fane's successor, and in the same year Horace Walpole visited him at Florence, at the 'Casa Mannetti, by the Ponte de Trinità.' The poet Gray had visited him a short while previously; he describes Mann as the best and most obliging person in the world, was delighted with his house, from the windows of which, he says, 'we can fish in the Arno,' and in 1745 despatched his 'good dear Mr. Mann' a heavy box of books.

The envoy's chief business seems to have been to watch over the doings of the Pretender and his family in Italy. He certainly retails much gossip that is damaging to the character of the last Stuarts. On the death of the Old Pretender in 1766 Mann succeeded in bullying the pope into suppressing the titles of his successor at Rome. Count Albani, the Young Pretender, whose habitual drunkenness neutralised any political importance that he might have had, came to reside at Florence in 1776, from which date onwards the British envoy's letters are full of disagreeable descriptions of his complicated disorders. In 1783 the Chevalier, who was dining at the table of the king of Sweden, then a visitor in Florence, gave Sir Horace a start by narrating the circumstances of his visit to London in September 1750, of which an independent and less authentic account was subsequently given by Dr. William King [q.v.] of St. Mary Hall (Anecdotes, p. 126). The despatch containing the account of the adventure as it came from the Chevalier's own lips, dated 6 Dec. 1783, is preserved with the other Tuscan State Papers at the