Wilson wrote several plays, which, according to Wood, ‘were acted at the Black Friars in London by the king's players, and in the act time at Oxford, with good applause, himself there present.’ Of these ‘The Inconstant Lady,’ which was entered at Stationers' Hall on 9 Sept. 1653, was printed by Dr. Philip Bliss at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1814. The titles of two others survived: (1) ‘The Corporall,’ licensed for acting at Blackfriars by the king's men (a fragment exists in manuscript); (2) ‘The Swisser.’ Both these were entered in the ‘Stationers' Register’ on 4 Sept. 1646 (Wood, iii. 322; Fleay, Chronicle of the English Drama, ii. 278).
Wilson's prose works consist of (1) an autobiography of himself, styled ‘Observations of God's Providence in the Tract of my Life,’ which was first printed in Peck's ‘Desiderata Curiosa’ in 1735, and is reprinted in the appendix to ‘The Inconstant Lady;’ (2) ‘The History of Great Britain, being the Life and Reign of King James I,’ 1653, folio, with a portrait of King James by Vaughan. This is reprinted in the second volume of Kennett's ‘Complete History of England,’ 1706. As an historian Wilson is very strongly prejudiced against the rule of the Stuarts, but his work is of value because it records contemporary impressions and reminiscences which are of considerable interest. At times he speaks as an eye-witness, especially in his account of the foreign expeditions in which he took part. He quotes at some length the speeches of the king, the petitions or remonstrances of the parliament, and other original documents. William Sanderson's ‘Reign and Death of King James,’ 1656, contains a detailed criticism and refutation of Wilson's attacks on that king and his government. He describes the history as ‘truth and falsehood finely put together,’ and asserts that Wilson's collections were ‘shaped out’ for publication by an unnamed presbyterian doctor. Heylyn, in his ‘Examen Historicum,’ 1659, calls Wilson's book ‘a most infamous pasquil,’ classing it with Weldon's ‘Court of King James,’ as libels in which ‘it is not easy to judge whether the matter be more false or the style more reproachful in all parts thereof.’ Wood is little less severe. Wilson, he says, ‘had a great command of the English tongue, as well in writing as speaking. And had he bestowed his endeavours on another subject than that of history, they would without doubt have seemed better. For in those things which he hath done are wanting the principal matters conducing to the completion of that faculty, viz. matter from record, exact time, name and place; which by his endeavouring too much to set out his bare collections in an affected and bombastic style are much neglected.’ He concludes by complaining of ‘a partial presbyterian vein that constantly goes through the whole work, it being the genius of those people to pry more than they should into the courts and comportments of princes, to take occasion thereupon to traduce and bespatter them.’
Wilson intended to complete his history by narrating the reign of Charles I, but died before he could carry out his plan.
[Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, ed. 1779; Wood's Athenæ Oxon., ed. Bliss, iii. 318; Wilson's Inconstant Lady, ed. Bliss, 1814.]
WILSON, BENJAMIN (1721–1788), painter and man of science, born at Leeds in the latter part of 1721, was the fourteenth and youngest child of a wealthy clothier named Major Wilson, by his wife, Elizabeth Yates. He was educated for a short time at Leeds grammar school, but after a disagreement between his father and the headmaster he was removed to a smaller school in the neighbourhood. His love of art was awakened at an early age by the decoration of his father's house on Mill Hill, near Leeds, by the French artist Jacques Parmentier, and he afterwards received nearly twelve months' instruction from another French artist, named Longueville, who was engaged in executing historical paintings for Thomas Lister of Gisburn Park in Craven. While Benjamin was still a youth his father fell into poverty, and he resolved to seek a livelihood in London. He walked most of the way, and on his arrival received from a relative a suit of new clothes and two guineas as a start in life. The money, he states, kept him in food for a twelvemonth, and at the end of that time he gained employment as a clerk in the registry of the prerogative court in Doctors' Commons, where he saved two-thirds of his salary of three half-crowns a week. These achievements rest on Wilson's personal statements, but as he esteemed frugality the first of virtues, it is possible that in his old age he exaggerated the abstemiousness of his youth. When he had amassed 50l. he obtained a more remunerative post as clerk to the registrar of the Charterhouse, and, finding his duties less laborious, he resumed his artistic studies. In these he received some encouragement from the master of the Charterhouse, Samuel Berdmore [q. v.], and some instruction from the painter Thomas Hudson (1701–1779) [q. v.] By perseverance and
