filled the whole court with admiration and confusion.' And on the following day Sheriff Townshend, again writing to the Earl of Chatham under date 25 May 1770 (see Correspondence, iii. 460), said: 'The Lord Mayor's Speech in the "Public Advertiser" of yesterday is verbatim, the words "and necessary" being left out before "revolution," and is ordered to be entered on the journals of the Court of Common Council.' Besides being entered thus on the records of the city, the speech was scattered broadcast over all contemporary periodicals. Horace Walpole, writing on 24 May 1770 to Sir Horace Mann, referred (see Letters, v. 238-9) to its having reduced the king to the alternative of either sitting silent, or tucking up his train, jumping from the throne, and taking sanctuary in the royal closet. Lord Chatham in return for that speech was more affectionate than ever to Beckford. It was printed directly after its delivery in the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' xl. 218-9. Half a year later it was deliberately republished as authentic in the 'Annual Register' for 1770, in which may also be found, at p. 111, under date 30 May, an account of the lord mayor, in company with the aldermen, sheriffs, and common councilmen, having again gone from Guildhall to St. James's with an address on the queen's safe delivery, when the lord chamberlain came into the ante-chamber bearing a paper in his hand from which he read these words: 'As your lordship thought fit to speak to his majesty after his answer to the last remonstrance, I am to acquaint your lordship, as it was unusual, his majesty desires that nothing of this kind may happen for the future.' Upon the following day, 31 May 1770, Beckford laid the first stone of Newgate. Exactly three weeks afterwards, at the age of sixty years and six months, he died in London, on 21 June 1770, his fatal illness being the result of a chill caught in hastening up to town from his estate of Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire. He was buried at Fonthill on the last day of that month, leaving his only child and namesake [see Beckford, William]], 1759–1844], then a boy of nine, to come into possession, after a long minority, of a million of money and 100,000l. a year. Lord Mayor Beckford's wife, the mother of this boy, was Maria, daughter of the Hon. George Hamilton, second surviving son of James, sixth earl of Abercorn. The sum of 1,000l. was set apart by the city of London on the morrow of Beckford's death for the Guildhall monument in his honour, which was unveiled on Midsummer day two years afterwards. Another admirable life-size statue of Beckford in white marble, formerly at Fonthill Abbey, sculptured by More, and the gift of Beckford's son, the author of 'Vathek,' to his father's old city company, stands midway on the staircase of Ironmongers' Hall, in Fenchurch Street.
[Nicoll's History of the Ironmongers' Company, 1866, pp. 453, 467, 491, 590; Orridge's Account of the Citizens of London and their Rulers, from 1060 to 1867, pp. 203, 244-8; Maitland's History of London, continued to 1772 by the Rev. John Entick, 1775, ii. 35, 47, 52, 72, 85, 92, 96-116; Britton's Illustrations of Fonthill Abbey, 1823, ch. iii. pp. 61-8; Noorthouck's History of London, 1783, pp. 417, 462, 468-486; Redding's Memoirs of William Beckford, i. 1-70; Thornbury's Old and New London, i. 407; Gent. Mag. xl. 215-9, 340-1; Annual Register for 1770, 8vo, pp. 111, 199-203, 251,252; Notes and Queries, 1st series, ii. 262; Craik and Macfarlane's Pictorial History of England, 2nd series, iv. 80, 96-8; Massey's History of England under George III, i. 357, 358; Adolphus's History of England, i. 437-40; Horace Walpole's Letters, v.238, 239; Chatham Correspondence, iii. 458-9, 460; Gifford's ed. Ben Jonson, 1816, vi. 481 note; History of Lord North's Administration to the Dissolution of the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain, 1781, part i. 12-15; Correspondence of Gray and Mason, 1853, p. 439; Public Advertiser, No. 11067, 24 May 1770; Stephens's Memoirs of John Horne Tooke, 1813, i. 157.]
BECKFORD, WILLIAM (d. 1799), historian, passed a great part of his life in Jamaica, where he made observations on the country and particularly on the condition of the negroes. On returning to England he settled at Somerley Hall in Suffolk, and died in London on 5 Feb. 1799.
His works are:
- 'Remarks on the Situation of the Negroes in Jamaica, impartially made from a local experience of nearly thirteen years in that island,' 1788.
- 'A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica, with Remarks upon the Cultivation of the Sugar Cane throughout the different seasons of the year, and chiefly considered in a picturesque point of view,' 1790.
- 'History of France from the most early records to the death of Louis XVI,' 1794. The early part is by Beckford, and the more modern by an anonymous Englishman who had been sometime resident in Paris.
[Gent. Mag. vol. lxix. pt. i.; Monthly Review, lxxix. 69; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Watt's Bibl. Brit.]
BECKFORD, WILLIAM (1759–1844), author of 'Vathek,' son of William Beckford (1709-1770) [q.v.], was born at Fonthill, 29 Sept. 1759. After the death of his father
