to his retention of his fellowship (cf. Gent. Mag. 1816, ii. 212). On 12 May 1722 he was instituted, on the nomination of his college, to the sinecure rectory of Duloe in Cornwall, and in 1739 he was appointed by the same body to the rectory of Huntspill in Somerset, holding both preferments until his death. He died senior fellow of Balliol College on 25 Sept. 1774, in his eighty-fourth year, having been a resident in the college for nearly sixty years, and was buried in the church of St. Mary Magdalen, Oxford, where a monument was erected to his memory.
Though his friends could never ‘prevail upon him to publish any specimens of his critical learning,’ and he left no writings behind him ‘but a few short manuscript notes on the margins of some printed books’ (Polwhele, History of Cornwall, v. 179), Sanford was well known for his erudition, his valuable library, and the singularity of his attire. He left to Exeter College books and manuscripts. The latter had previously belonged to Sir William Glynne, and are mostly historical or antiquarian (Coxe, Cat. of MS. in Oxford Colleges). To the Bodleian Library he gave in 1753 a copy of Archbishop Parker's rare ‘De Antiquitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ,’ 1572 (Macray, Bodl. Libr. 2nd ed. p. 234). He was an intimate friend of Hearne. Sanford purchased in 1767 the very rare first edition of the Hebrew Bible, and gave much assistance to Dr. Kennicott in his great work on the Bible. It was the loan by him of a manuscript relating to Dorset that induced Hutchins to undertake the task of compiling a history of that county, and he is one of the two members of Balliol College to whom Richard Chandler expressed his obligations in the preface to his ‘Marmora Oxoniensia’ (1763).
[Boase's Exeter Coll. Commoners, p. 286; Gent. Mag. 1774 p. 447, 1816 ii. 212, 388, 488; Hutchins's Dorset, pref. to 1st ed.; Nichols's Illustr. of Lit. iii. 705, iv. 574–5, and Lit. Anecdotes, iii. 684, vii. 719, viii. 230–60; Rel. Hearnianæ (1869 ed.), ii. 309, iii. 102.]
SANGAR, GABRIEL (d. 1678), ejected minister, son of Thomas Sangar, minister of Sutton-Mandeville, Wiltshire, matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 20 Oct. 1626, and graduated B.A. in 1629 and M.A. in 1632. He was successively rector of Sutton-Mandeville (1630–45), Havant, Hampshire (1645–47), Chilmark, Wiltshire (1647), St. Martin's-in-the-Fields (1648–60), and of Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire (1660–2). From the last place he was ejected in 1662. After his ejectment he removed to Brompton, and, after the Conventicle Act, to Ealing and Brentford. At the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672 he returned to London, and preached occasionally to some of his old congregation of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. He died in May 1678.
Sangar wrote: 1. ‘The Work of Faith improved by a providential concurrence of many eminent and pious Ministers in and about the City of London in their Morning Lectures at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields,’ London, 1656. 2. ‘A Short Catechism with respect to the Lord's Sermon.’ A catalogue of his library is in the British Museum (1678, 4to).
[Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Calamy's Account, p. 27; Addit. MS. 15669, f. 232; The Concurrent Testimony of the Ministers in the County of Wilts; Commons' Journals, ii. 559; A Seasonable Exhortation of sundry Ministers in London, 1660.]
SANGER, JOHN (1816–1889), circus proprietor, born at Chew Magna, Somerset, in 1816, was eldest son of James Sanger who, having been seized by the press-gang, fought as a sailor at the battle of Trafalgar, and subsequently became a showman. After witnessing equestrian performances under Andrew Ducrow [q. v.] at Astley's, Sanger, with his brother George, began in 1845 a conjuring exhibition on a small scale at Onion Fair, Birmingham. Emboldened by success, the brothers then purchased and trained a white horse and a Shetland pony, and, having hired three or four performers, exhibited for the first time a circus entertainment at Lynn in Norfolk. This with unvarying success they took round the country. Their first appearance in London was made at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, of which they were during many years lessees, and they produced there many costly and elaborate spectacles, one of which, entitled ‘The Congress of Monarchs,’ is said to have been seen in one day by thirty-seven thousand spectators. The properties and paraphernalia of this were purchased in 1874 by the American showman, P. T. Barnum, for 33,000l. Having acquired the lease of Astley's Amphitheatre, the Sangers gave their entertainments there during the three winter months, travelling during the summer through the country with a large establishment, including, besides other animals, over two hundred horses, and exhibiting their entertainments in a huge tent. The first equestrian pantomime produced at Astley's was ‘Lady Godiva, or Harlequin St. George and the Dragon, and the Seven Champions,’ given on 26 Dec. 1871, Miss Amy Sheridan, a tall and shapely actress, playing Lady Godiva. After a time the
