him, and attempts made to obtain a remission of the sentence, but the sole concession granted was that his quarters should be delivered to his friends. On 31 Aug. he was borne in a cart to the place of execution, and made a long speech, chiefly to clear himself from the charge of being a papist, admitting that he had been present once at a Romanist service, but only from curiosity. He denied that he was guilty of the treason whereof he had been convicted, and knew of no plot except the popish plot; that the witnesses against him had sworn falsely; but he admitted that he rode armed to Oxford, for the sake of defending the parliament from assaults of the papists, and that he had been very zealous for protestantism, and might have uttered in heat words of indecency against the king and his council; he finally desired the people to pray for him, and wished that his blood might be the last protestant's blood the church of Rome would shed. Having kissed his son he was then hanged and quartered. His body was carried to London by his friends, and buried the next evening at St. Gregory's Church, by St. Paul's. No trust can be placed in 'A Letter written from Oxford by Mr. Stephen College to his friends in London,' dated 1681; it is one of Nathaniel Thompson's ' pious frauds,' or a jest not intended to mislead anybody. Another clever party squib from the same publisher is mockingly entitled 'A Modest Vindication of the Proceedings of the late Grand Jury at the Old Baily, who returned the bill against Stephen College, Ignoramus.' It pretends to attribute their doing so to a loyal impulse, in order to bring about the sure punishment at Oxford, as if tried in London the petty jury would have acquitted him. Many ballads and lampoons were circulated against him at the time of his death, one of the best being Matthew Taubman's song, 'On the Death of the Protestant Joyner,' beginning,
Brave College is hang'd, the chief of our hopes,
For pulling down bishops and making new popes.
Sung to the tune of 'Now, now the Right's done' (180 Loyal Songs, 1685, p. 64). The portrait of College is in the Cracherode collection, British Museum. Although the features are plebeian, with high cheek-bones, coarse nose and mouth, long upper lip, and massive chin, he has an intelligent expression of eye, and is dressed above his station, with flowing peruke, lace cravat, and rich cloak.
[The Arraignment, Tryal, and Condemnation of Stephen College for High Treason (Brit. Mus. 6495, i. 4); Sir John Hawles's Remarks upon the Trials of E. Fitzharris, Stephen College, and others; Lingard, x. 33 Cobbett's State Trials, vii. 1466, and viii. 549, &c.; Bulstrode; North's Examen; Notes upon Stephen College, by Roger L'Estrange, 2nd ed. 1681; Strange News from Newgate, or A Relation how the Ghost of College the Protestant Joyner appeared to Hone the Joyner since his condemnation. Printed for N. T., 1683; Stephen College's Ghost to the Fanatical Cabal, 1681, beginning 'From the unfathom'd bowels of those cells;' A Poem by way of Elegie upon Mr. Stephen College, beginning, 'Ah, College! how relentless is thy fate;' answered in A Modest Reply to the too hasty and malicious Libel entituled An Elegy, etc., beginning, 'Tis wicked with insulting feet to tread upon the monuments of the dead,' printed for R. Janeway, 1681; Granger, iv. 205; Loyal Poems and Satyrs upon the Times, collected by M. T. (Matthew Taubman), 1685; Have you any Work for a Cooper? or A Comparison between a Cooper's (Shaftesbury's) and a Joyner' s Trade, beginning 'The Cooper and the Joyner are two famous Trades,' 1681; most of these ballads and elegies are reproduced in the Bagford Ballads and the Roxburghe Ballads, iv. 262, 263, and v. 34 to 40, of the Ballad Society, including 'The Protestant Flail' and 'The Oxford Health;' Poems on Affairs of State, iii. 178-90, 1704. The verses below his portrait in the copper-plate declare that 'By Irish oaths and wrested law I fell, A prey to Rome, a sacrifice to hell,' &c.]
COLLES, ABRAHAM (1773–1843), surgeon, was born in 1773 at Milmount, near Kilkenny, being descended from an English family of good means long settled in co. Kilkenny. During his education in Kilkenny grammar school a flood swept away part of the house of a doctor named Butler, and carried a work on anatomy into a field near Colles's home. The boy picked it up; the doctor gave him the book, and this led to Colles's choice of a profession. Entering Dublin University in 1790 he was at the same time apprenticed to Dr. "Woodroffe, resident surgeon in Steevens's Hospital. He refused to be tempted aside from his profession, though Edmund Burke,
a family acquaintance, recommended his publishing some 'remarks on the condition of political satire,' which he had written. When his uncle talked of the name he was sacrificing, the youth replied: 'A name, sir! Yes, as an author, and then not a dowager in Dublin would call me in to cure a sore throat.'
Having obtained the diploma of the Irish College of Surgeons in 1795, Colles studied at Edinburgh for two sessions, and graduated M.D. He went on foot from Edinburgh to London, where he remained some time, assisting Astley Cooper in the dissections for his work on hernia, and attending the London hospitals. In 1797 Colles returned to Dublin,
