Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/355

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Giles
349
Giles

self performed the ceremony out of canonical hours, soon after 6 a.m.; of having falsely entered that it was performed by license; and of having forged the mark of a witness who was not present. He pleaded not guilty, but it was evident that he had committed the offence out of foolish good nature, in order to cover the frailty of one of his servants, whom he married to her lover, Richard Pratt, a shoemaker's apprentice. Pratt's master, one of Giles's parishioners, instituted the proceedings. Giles spoke on his own behalf, and declared that he had published 120 volumes. His bishop also spoke for him. He was found guilty, but strongly recommended to mercy. Lord Campbell sentenced him to a year's imprisonment in Oxford Castle. His fate excited much commiseration in the university, and after three months' imprisonment he was released by royal warrant on 4 June (Times, 7 March and 7 June 1855). After the lapse of two or three years he took the curacy, with sole charge, of Perrivale in Middlesex, and after remaining there five years became curate of Harmondsworth, near Slough. At the end of a year he resigned this curacy, and went to live at Cranford, in the immediate neighbourhood, where he took pupils, and after a while removed to Ealing. He did not resume clerical work until he was presented in 1867 to the living of Sutton in Surrey, which he held for seventeen years, until his death on 24 Sept. 1884. His literary tastes and some peculiarities of manner and disposition are said to have injured his popularity, but he was kind and courteous. His wife survived him, and he left two sons, one in the Bengal police, the other, Herbert Allen Giles, Professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge. He also left two daughters, the elder married to Dundas W. Cloeté of Churchill Court, Somerset, the younger unmarried.

Much of Giles's literary work was hasty, and done as task work for booksellers. Still, historical scholars, especially those who began to study before the publication of the Rolls Series of editions, have reason to remember him with gratitude, although his editions of historical works are frequently disfigured by carelessness, and lack of arrangement, indexes, and every kind of critical apparatus. Many of his works require no notice. Besides those already noticed he published a ‘Greek Lexicon,’ 1839. Between 1837 and 1843 he published the ‘Patres Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ,’ a series of thirty-four volumes, containing the works of Aldhelm, Bæda, Boniface, Lanfranc, Archbishop Thomas, John of Salisbury, Peter of Blois, Gilbert Foliot, and other authors. Several volumes of the Caxton Society's publications were edited by him, chiefly between 1845 and 1854. Among these were ‘Anecdota Bædæ et aliorum,’ ‘Benedictus Abbas, de Vita S. Thomæ,’ ‘Chron. Angliæ Petroburgense,’ ‘La révolte du Conte de Warwick,’ and ‘Vitæ quorundam Anglo-Saxonum.’ His ‘Scriptores rerum gestarum Willelmi Conquestoris’ was published in 1845. He contributed to Bohn's Antiquarian Library translations of ‘Matthew Paris,’ 1847, ‘Bede's Ecclesiastical History,’ and the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ 1849, and other works. In 1845 he published ‘Life and Times of Thomas Becket,’ 2 vols., translated into French, 1858; in 1847, ‘History of the Ancient Britons,’ 2 vols., and in 1848, ‘Life and Times of Alfred the Great.’ In 1847–8 appeared his ‘History of Bampton,’ 2 vols., and in 1852 his ‘History of Witney and some neighbouring Parishes.’ While at Bampton, in 1850 he published ‘Hebrew Records’ on the age and authenticity of the books of the Old Testament, and in 1854 ‘Christian Records on the Age, Authorship, and Authenticity of the Books of the New Testament,’ in which he contends, in a preface dated 26 Oct. 1853, that the ‘Gospels and Acts were not in existence before the year 150,’ and remarks that ‘the objections of ancient philosophers, Celsus, Porphyry, and others, were drowned in the tide of orthodox resentment’ (with reference to this book see Letters of the Bishop of Oxford and Dr. J. A. G., published in a separate volume). In 1853 he began to work on a series called ‘Dr. Giles's Juvenile Library,’ which went on appearing from time to time until 1860, and comprises a large number of school-books, ‘First Lessons’ on English, Scottish, Irish, French, and Indian history, on geography, astronomy, arithmetic, &c. He contributed ‘Poetic Treasures’ to Moxon's ‘Popular Poets’ in 1881.

[Information from the president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and private sources; Times, 7 March, p. 112, and 7 June, 1855, p. 10; Ann. Register, 1855, pp. 50, 51; Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1860; Oxford Univ. Cal. 1889; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

W. H.

GILES, NATHANIEL (d. 1634), composer, was born in or near Worcester about the middle of the sixteenth century, and was a chorister at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1567 to 1571. In 1577 he was clerk in the same chapel, but remained there only one year. He took the degree of Mus.B. at Oxford on 26 June 1585, and on 1 Oct. 1595 became organist and master of the choristers at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. In June 1597 he succeeded William Hunnis as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal and master of the children. Hawkins's statement that on the ac-