Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/164

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Olliffe
158
Ollivant

and topographical knowledge, but his works were chiefly compiled from obvious sources.

[Times, 23 April 1686; Athenæum, 1 May 1886; Brit. Mus. Cat.; personal knowledge.]

L. C. S.


OLLIFFE, Sir JOSEPH FRANCIS (1808–1869), physician, son of Joseph Olliffe, merchant, of Cork, by Elizabeth, daughter of Charles McCarthy of Sunville, co. Limerick, was born at Cork in 1808. He was educated in Paris, and graduated M.A. at the university in 1829, and M.D. in 1840. For some time he acted as tutor in the family of the Count de Cresnoi, but in 1840 he commenced the practice of medicine in Paris. He was a fellow of the Anatomical Society of Paris, and at one period filled the post of president of the Paris Medical Society. Louis-Philippe in 1846 appointed him a knight of the Legion of Honour, and he was promoted to the rank of officer in 1855 by Napoleon III. In March 1852 he became physician to the British embassy, and on 13 June in the following year was knighted at Buckingham Palace. The board of trade nominated him a juror for hygiene, pharmacy, surgery, and medicine in the French international exhibition in April 1855; in 1861 he was appointed one of the committee for sanitary appliances in the international exhibition of 1862, and he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1859. He enjoyed for many years a large practice and considerable social position. Inheriting by his marriage in 1841 with Laura (d. 1898), second daughter of Sir William Cubitt, a large fortune, he was able to entertain largely. The friend as well as the physician of Count de Morny, he joined him in extensive building operations at Deauville, near Trouville, a watering-place which they may be said to have created. The heavy responsibilities connected with this unremunerative speculation much clouded his later years. He died at Brighton on 14 March 1869.

[Register and Magazine of Biography, April 1869, p. 296; British Medical Journal, 20 March 1869, p. 274.]

G. C. B.


OLLIVANT, ALFRED (1798–1881), bishop of Llandaff, son of William Ollivant and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Stephen Langston of Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire, some time alderman of London, was born in Manchester, where his father was engaged in business, on 16 Aug. 1798. The family afterwards removed to London, and Ollivant's father, whose affairs had become involved, obtained a clerkship in the navy office, and then resided at 11 Smith Street, Northampton Square. On 22 Aug. 1809 Alfred was admitted a scholar of St. Paul's School, along with an elder brother, Langston. Rising to be captain of the school, he was elected in 1817 to a Campden exhibition at Trinity College, Cambridge. His career at the university was brilliant. After gaining a Perry exhibition in 1819, in 1820 he was elected Craven scholar, and in 1821 graduated sixth wrangler, obtaining also—what was then the highest classical distinction—the senior chancellor's medal. Soon afterwards he was elected fellow of Trinity. In 1822 he gained the Tyrwhitt Hebrew scholarship, and in 1822 and 1823 the members' prize for a Latin essay. He proceeded M.A. in 1824, B.D. and D.D. in 1836.

In 1827 he was appointed vice-principal of the newly founded college of St. David, Lampeter, under the Rev. Llewelyn Lewellin, afterwards dean of St. David's. In this office he continued sixteen years, during which he held several small preferments in Wales, and obtained a competent knowledge of the language. He was prebendary (third cursal) of St. David's, 28 July 1829; sinecure rector of Llangeler, Carmarthenshire, 22 Feb. 1831; prebendary of St. Harmons, Brecon, 10 Nov. 1831; vicar of Llangeler, 10 April 1832; rector of Bettws Bledrws, Cardiganshire, 31 March 1835; and vicar of Kerry, Montgomeryshire, 8 Nov. 1836 (Foster, Index Ecclesiasticus, pp. 131–2). In 1843 he was elected to the regius professorship of divinity at Cambridge, carrying with it the rectory of Somersham, Huntingdonshire; and in 1849, on the nomination of Lord John Russell, he was raised to the see of Llandaff (nom. 29 Oct., cons. 2 Dec.) in succession to Edward Copleston [q. v.]

His long episcopate of thirty-three years was marked by much useful work and by many reforms. For many generations no bishop had been, properly speaking, resident. Copleston, as dean of St. Paul's, spent much of his time in London. The small income, before the provision of one by statute, coupled with the want of a residence, had proved fatal to the interests of the see; but Ollivant devoted himself wholly to his diocese, only leaving it to attend convocation or to sit in parliament when church questions were under discussion, or to fulfil his duties as a member of the Old Testament revision company. The proposal in convocation in 1870 to revise the New Testament had been extended to the Old on his initiative. As a result of his self-denying labour he could point in the end to a cathedral finally restored from its ruins (the work, which commenced under his predecessor, costing about 35,000l.), while about one hundred and seventy churches were built, restored, or enlarged, more than