Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/52

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Mann
46
Manners

were translated for ‘Opuscoli scelti sulle scienze,’ published at Milan in 1778, &c.

[Éloge de l'Abbé Mann in Reiffenberg's Annuaire de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels, 1850, pp. 77–125, appended is an exhaustive bibliography, ‘Scripta, tam inedita quam impressa;’ Goethals' Hist. des Lettres en Belgique, 1840, ii. 319; Nouvelle Biog. Générale, xxxiii. 231; Ellis's Letters of Eminent Literary Men (Camden Society), pp. 413 sq.; Mémoires de l'Académie Impériale et Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles, 4 vols. 1783; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. viii. 41–4, ix. 263–5; Gent. Mag. 1787, 1788, 1789, passim.]

T. S.


MANN, WILLIAM (1817–1873), astronomer, was born at Lewisham in Kent on 25 Oct. 1817. He was third son of Major-general Cornelius Mann, R.E., and grandson of Gother Mann [q. v.], and accompanied his family to Gibraltar in 1830, on his father's appointment as commanding-royal engineer. In 1837 Admiral Shirreff procured him the post of second assistant at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, and after due preparation he entered upon his duties in October 1839. For six years he was engaged chiefly on the remeasurement of Lacaille's arc, and sometimes passed three months without shelter even by night. His health, impaired by hardships, was recruited by a trip to England in 1846, and on his return in December 1847 he engaged, as first assistant, in the ordinary work of the observatory. His next voyage home was for the purpose of fetching the new transit-circle, erected by him at the Gape in 1855 with only native aid. His observations of the great comet of December 1844, and of the transit of Mercury on 4 Nov. 1868, were communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society (Monthly Notices, vi. 314, 934, 252, xxix. 196), of which body he was elected a member on 10 March 1871. From a chest disorder, contracted through assiduity in cometary observations, he sought relief at Natal in 1866, in England in 1867, but was attacked in 1870 with shattering effect by scarlet fever, of which two of his children had just died. He retired from the observatory, and died at Claremont, near Cape Town, on 30 April 1873. He married in 1863 Caroline, second daughter of Sir Thomas Maclear [q. v.] The value for three years of a small pension, granted to him from the civil list on the eve of his death, was paid to her by Mr. Gladstone's orders. Mann's character and abilities were superior to his opportunities. He was a good mathematician and mechanician, and his fellow-assistant, Professor Piazzi Smyth, wrote of his 'splendid intellectual parts and excellent dispositions.'

[Monthly Notices, xzxiv. 141.]

A. M. C.


MANNERS, Mrs. CATHERINE, afterwards Lady Stepney (d. 1845). [See Stepney.]


MANNERS, CHARLES, fourth Duke of Rutland (1754–1787), the elder son of John Manners, marquis of Granby [q. v.], by his wife Lady Frances Seymour, daughter of Charles, sixth duke of Somerset, and grandson of John, third duke of Rutland, was born on 15 March 1754. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where be was created M.A, in 1774. At the general election in October 1774 he was returned to the House of Commons for the University of Cambridge. He warmly opposed the third reading of the bill for restraining the trade of the southern colonies of America in April 1775, and protested against the taxation of that country, which he declared 'commenced in iniquity, is pursued with resentment, and, can terminate in nothing but blood' (Parl. Hist. xviii. 601–3; see also Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 1840, iv. 405–6). On 18 Nov. 1777 his amendment to the address praying that the king might be pleased 'to cause the most speedy and effectual measures to be taken for restoring peace in America' was seconded by Lord John Cavendish [q. v.], and supported by Burke and Fox, but was defeated by 243 to 86 (Parl. Hist. xix. 414–15, 442). Upon the death of his grandfather John, third duke of Rutland, on 29 May 1779, he succeeded to the title (cf. Journals of the House of Lords, xxxv, 800). He was sworn lord-lieutenant of Leicestershire on 9 July 1779 (London Gazette, No. 11994), and invested a knight of the Garter on 3 Oct. 1782. On 14 Feb. 1783 he was appointed lord steward of the household with a seat in the Earl of Shelburne's cabinet, and on the same day was admitted a member of the privy council. He resigned office upon the formation of the coalition ministry in April 1783, but was appointed lord privy seal in Pitt's administration on 23 Dec. following (ib. No. 12503). He was induced by Pitt to accept the post of lord-lieutenant of Ireland in the place of the Earl of Northington on 11 Feb. 1784, and was sworn in at Dublin on the 24th of the same month(ib. No. 13623). Though Pitt at first seems to have been sincerely anxious to reform the Irish parliament, Rutland pronounced the question of reform to be 'difficult and dangerous to the last degree,' and while the demand for retrenchment at its height insisted on the creation of places in order to strengthen the parliamentary influence of the government. He appears to have quickly made up his mind in favour of a legislative union, and in a letter