Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/75

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Dart
69
Dartiquenave

DART, JOSEPH HENRY (1817–1887), conveyancer, eldest son of Joseph Dart of Tidwell, Devonshire, secretary to the East India Company, was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where, having gained the Newdigate prize for a poem on the ‘Exile of St. Helena,’ he graduated B.A. in 1838, and proceeded M.A. in 1841. Having been admitted a student at Lincoln's Inn on 25 Jan. 1836, he was called to the bar on 28 Jan. 1841. He married, on 15 Sept. 1842, Adeline Pennal, eldest daughter of Richard Humber. In 1851 Dart published ‘A Compendium of the Law and Practice of Vendors and Purchasers of Real Estate,’ London, 8vo. A second edition appeared in 1852, a third in 1856, a fourth in 1871, and a fifth in 1876. In the last three editions Dart was assisted by William Barber, esq. (now Q.C.). The work attained the reputation of a standard treatise many years before the death of the author. In 1860 Dart was appointed one of the six conveyancing counsel to the court of chancery, and, on the passing of the Judicature Act, 1875, senior conveyancing counsel to the high court of justice. This office he resigned in 1886. In 1877 he was elected one of the verderers of the New Forest, on the borders of which he had an estate—Beech House, Ringwood. He was also a justice of the peace for Hampshire. Though he never took silk, he was elected in 1885 a bencher of his inn. He died on 27 June 1887 at his house at Ringwood at the age of seventy. He left a family. Besides the legal work already mentioned, Dart was the author of a translation of the ‘Iliad’ into English hexameter verse, which attracted the favourable notice of Dr. Whewell and Lord Lindsay. The first volume, containing the first twelve books, appeared in 1862, the second in 1865, Lond. 8vo.

[Times, 1 July 1887; Law Journ. 2 July 1887; Solicitors' Journ. 2 July 1887; Foster's Men at the Bar; Law List, 1886; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

J. M. R.

DARTIQUENAVE, CHARLES (1664–1737), epicure and humorist, whose name was pronounced and commonly written as Darteneuf, has been frequently called a natural son of Charles II. His face indicated a foreign and probably a French origin, but it bore no resemblance to his reputed father, and the biographers who have accepted the tradition of his royal paternity have suggested that his mother was a Frenchwoman. A more likely supposition is that he was the élève of a refugee French family, whose name he assumed, or, as is the opinion of Noble, that he was connected with John James Dartiquenave, who was buried at Fulham 25 Sept. 1709. The pleasures of the table and of convivial society proved an irresistible attraction for him throughout his life, and he became in general estimation the bon-vivant of his day. Though his friends were not limited to one political party, he himself espoused the whig cause with great warmth, and received the reward of his constancy. Among the treasury papers in the Record Office (vol. iii. No. 10) is a copy of an indenture whereby Dartiquenave and another acquired ‘the office of keeper of Hampton Park, Bushey Park, and the Mansion House of Hampton Court during the lifetime of the Duchess of Cleveland,’ but this was obtained by purchase. Political merits gave him from 1706 to 1726 the post of paymaster of the royal works, and his salary in 1709 was at the rate of 6s. 6d. a day, but in 1717 he pleaded for an addition of 200l. per annum, and the lords of the treasury sanctioned the increase from Michaelmas 1717 (Calendars of Treasury Papers, 1708–19). He was gazetted surveyor-general of the king's gardens in June 1726, and in March 1731 it was understood that he should be promoted to be surveyor of his majesty's private roads. It has often been erroneously stated that Dartiquenave was actually appointed to the surveyorship of George II's private roads. But the latter office was conferred on 15 May 1731 on Richard Arundel, M.P. for Knaresborough, who held the post till his appointment as master of the mint in 1737, when Thomas Ripley [q. v.] became surveyor of roads. Dartiquenave lived as became his position, about the court, in the outquarters of St. James's Palace, but on his death (19 Oct. 1737) he was buried on 26 Oct. in the church of Albury in Hertfordshire, where a slab in the church was placed to his memory. His wife was Mary Scroggs, daughter of John Scroggs of Albury parish. She was born in 1684, buried at Albury 31 Aug. 1756, and became coheiress to the manor of Patmere in Albury. Her sister Judith, who married John Lance, sold her moiety to Dartiquenave, so that he ultimately acquired the entire estate. Dartiquenave's son was a captain in the guards, and his grandson sold the property in 1775. Swift and Dartiquenave were staunch friends, and by themselves or in the company of such jovial spirits as St. John and Parnell, they dined or drank punch. ‘My friend Dartineuf,’ says Swift in his ‘Journal to Stella,’ ‘is the greatest punner of this town next myself,’ and in another passage of the same .journal Swift dubs his friend ‘the man that knows everything and that every-