John Miles Tompkins, the children of the said Mrs. Francis Forcer (d. 1726) by her first husband.
Forcer, Francis, the younger (1675?-1743), was known after 1724 as master of Sadler's Wells, and he resided there until his death. He had been sent to Oxford, entered Gray's Inn on 8 July 1696, and was called to the bar in 1703. Notwithstanding his culture, Forcer's reign at Sadler's Wells was marked by the introduction of nothing more intellectual than rope-dancing and tumbling. In 1735 a license for singing, dancing, pantomime, &c., and the sale of liquors was refused him by the authorities, who, however, promised at the same time not to interfere. It was not until after Forcer's death, when John Warren was occupier in 1744, that the grand jury of Middlesex thought it necessary to protest against the demoralising influence of this and similar places of amusement. Forcer the younger was tall, athletic, and handsome. Garbott relates that he improved the place, and adds:
Miles in his way obliging was, we know,
Yet F . . . . r's language doth the softer flow;
Behaviour far genteeler of the two.
By birth a gentleman and breeding too,
Oxford, for liberal arts that is so fam*d,
(Inferior all, none equal can be nam'd)
His Alma Mater was, it is well known.
And Gray's Inn learned gave to him the gown.
Call'd was he from thence imto the bar, &c.
— a profession soon abandoned for the lucrative position 'behind the barr' at Sadler's Wells, where Stephen Monteage, Woollaston, and other habitués were wont to 'tarry.' Forcer was found to be 'very ill of the new distemper' on 5 April 1743; on the 9th he died. By his will he desired that his lease of Sadler's Wells should be sold; other property was left to his widow, Catherine, for life, and the bulk of his property to Frances (Mrs. Savage), his daugnter by the former marriage.
[Addit.MSS. British Museum, 29283-4-5, and 31403; Playford's Theater of Music, ii.25; Choyce Ayres and Dialogues; W. H. Husk's Account of the Celebrations of St. Cecilia's Day, p. 14; Hawkins's Hist. of Music, iv. 380; Foster's London Marriage Licenses, p. 498; Guidott's Account of Sadler's Wells; Malcolm's Londinium Redivivum, iii. 232; Gent. Mag. xiii. 218, xiv. 278, xviii. 68, lxxxv. 559; Mirror, xxxiv. 218; Percival's Collection relating to Sadler's Wells (Brit. Mus.); Ned Ward's Walk to Islington, p. 13; P. C. C. Registers, Somerset House; Hovenden's Registers of Clerkenwell; Entry-books of Gray's Inn; Stephen Montcage's MS. Diary (at Guildhall) in Partridge's Almanacks, 1733 to 1746 passim; Garbott's New River. See also Pinks's Clerkenwell, p. 420, &c.]
FORD. [See also Forde.]
FORD, ANNE (1737-1824), authoress and musician. [See Thicknesse.]
FORD, DAVID EVERARD (1797–1875), author and musical composer, was born on 13 Sept. 1797 at Long Melford in Suffolk, where his father, the Rev. David Ford, was congregational minister. In 1816 he entered Wymondley College, and in 1821 became congregational minister at Lymington in Hampshire. During the twenty years of his residence in this town he published seven books of psalm and hymn tunes harmonised for four voices; a chorus for five voices—‘Blessings for ever on the Lamb’ (1825?); a song, ‘The Negro Slave’ (1825); ‘Progressive Exercises for the Voice, with illustrative examples’ (1826); ‘Observations on Psalmody’ (1828?); and in 1829 the ‘Rudiments of Music,’ the eleventh thousand of which was issued with the author's final revisions in 1843. Besides these musical productions Ford also published a sermon on John xi. 36, in 1826, and in 1828 ‘Hymns chiefly on the Parables of Christ.’ But the work by which he is best known, and which produced a great and immediate effect upon the religious world of the time, was an essay entitled, ‘Decapolis; or the Individual Obligation of Christians to save Souls from Death.’ This was published in 1840, and within a year had reached its fifth thousand; a fifth American edition also being issued in New York in 1848. Other essays of a similar kind were entitled ‘Chorazin; or an Appeal to the Child of many Prayers,’ 1841; ‘Damascus; or Conversion in relation to the Grace of God and the Agency of Man,’ 1842; ‘Laodicea; or Religious Declension,’ 1844; and ‘Alarm in Zion; or a few Thoughts on the Present State of Religion,’ 1847. In 1841 Ford accepted an appointment from the Congregational Union to visit the stations of the Home Missionary Society, and in 1843 took the oversight of a newly formed church in Manchester. Here he remained till 1858, when he retired from stated service as a resident minister. He, however, still continued to preach to other congregations in various parts of the country till 1874, when cataract, beginning to affect his vision, compelled him to desist. He died at Bedford 23 Oct. 1875 at the age of seventy-eight.
[Works of Ford; private sources.]
FORD, EDWARD (fl. 1647), ballad and verse writer, was probably a native of Norfolk. He wrote:
- 'Wine and Women, or a brief Description of the common Courtesie of a Curtezan,' London, 1647 (3 Dec. 1646), dedicated to 'Robert Walloppe, esq.,' M.P.
