Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/160

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Martineau
146
Martineau

a Place of Arms,' which, as an exposition of Mediterranean strategy from one of the great masters of the art, is deserving of very close attention.

[O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict.; Army and Navy Gazette, 30 March 1895; Burke's Baronetage; Navy Lists; private information.]

J. K. L.

MARTINEAU, JAMES (1805–1900), Unitarian divine, youngest son and seventh child of Thomas Martineau (d. 21 June 1826), camlet and bombazine manufacturer, by his wife Elizabeth (d. 26 Aug. 1848, aged 78), eldest daughter of Robert Rankin, sugar refiner, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, was born in Magdalen Street, Norwich, on 21 April 1805. His father, of Huguenot lineage, had a maternal descent from John Meadows or Meadowe [q. v.], the ejected puritan, which connected him with the family of John Taylor (1694-1761) [q. v.], the hebraist (Taylor, Suffolk Bartholomeans, 1840). His mother was a woman of great force of character and 'quickness of feeling' (Martineau's letter in Daily News, 30 Dec. 1884). His eldest brother, Thomas Martineau, M.D. (d. 3 June 1824, aged 29), was at the time of his early death reckoned the ablest of the family; but the personal charm of James was marked in boyhood. In 1815 he entered the Norwich grammar school, of which Edward Valpy [q. v.] became high master in that year. Among his schoolfellows were (Sir) James Brooke [q. v.], raja of Sarawak, and George (Henry) Borrow [q. v.] In after life Borrow would not meet Martineau, having been hoisted on his back to receive a well-earned birching (Life of F. P. Cobbe, 1894, ii. 117). Martineau, whose taste was for mathematics, did not proceed to the highest form, but was well grounded in classics, and on his eightieth birthday wrote some very good Latin verses in reply to his old friend Thomas Hornblower Gill, the hymn-writer (Inquirer, 20 Jan. 1900, p. 12). He was not 'physically robust,' and 'the tyranny of a large public school' did not suit him (letter in Daily News, ut sup.) At the suggestion of his sister, Harriet Martineau [q. v.], he was sent (1819) to the boarding-school of Lant Carpenter [q. v.] at Bristol; to Carpenter's influence in the discipline of character he pays the highest tributes (Memoirs of Lant Carpenter, 1842, p. 342; Life of Mary Carpenter, 1879, p. 9 ; cf. Unitarian Magazine, 1834, p. 185). Leaving school in 1821, he was apprenticed to Samuel Fox at Derby, with a view to becoming a civil engineer; he boarded with Edward Higginson [see under Higginson, Edward ], Unitarian minister at Derby, whose eldest daughter he afterwards married. The purely mechanical work of the machine-room did not satisfy him. The premature death (31 Jan. 1822, aged 29) of Henry Turner, Unitarian minister at Nottingham [son of William Turner, 1761-1859; see under Turner, William, 1714–1794], who had married (1819) Martineau's cousin, Catharine Rankin (d. 1 May 1894, aged 97), produced his 'conversion' (Proceedings in connection with his retirement, 1885, p. 28), and decided him for the ministry.

In September 1822 he entered Manchester College, York, as a divinity student under Charles Wellbeloved [q. v.] Classics and history were taught by John Kenrick [q. v.], a scholar of distinction. Philosophy fell to William Turner (1788-1853) [see under Turner, William, 1714-1794], who taught the Hartleyan determinism, then in vogue with Unitarians, but. felt its difficulties (Christian Reformer, 1854, p. 136). The first York student to adopt the libertarian view was William Mountford (1816-1885), author of 'Euthanasy' (1850), who broke with the Hartleyan philosophy while at York (1833-8). Martineau gained at York the highest honours (Christian Life, 23 June 1900, p. 302); his successful oration in 1825 bore the characteristic title 'The Necessity of cultivating the Imagination as a Regulator of the Devotional Feelings.' His father's death (1826) left on the family a burden of undischarged liabilities, all of which were paid in full. His mother's anxiety for his health, injured by 'intemperate study' (Kenrick), led her to propose his removal to Gottingen ; Kenrick thought the Gottingen system of lecturing for a session on 'one evangelist, one prophet,' inferior to Wellbeloved's plan of going through the Old or New Testament in a year (unpublished letter of Kenrick, 16 April 1826). Leaving York in 1827 he preached (4 July) one of the annual sermons of the Eastern Unitarian Association at Halesworth, Suffolk, the other preacher being Michael Maurice, father of (John) Frederick Denison Maurice [q. v.]

In 1827 he became, for a year, assistant and virtually locum tenens in Lant Carpenter's school at Bristol. Next year he was called to Dublin as co-pastor (assistant and successor) to his aged kinsman, Philip Taylor [see under Taylor, John, 1694-1761], and colleague with Joseph Hutton (d. 1 Feb. 1856, aged 90), grandfather of Richard Holt Hutton [q. v. Suppl.], in the congregation of Eustace Street, founded by Samuel Winter, D.D. [q. v.], on independent principles,