twentieth round the victory seemed falling to the challenger, but Painter, with a straight well-directed hit, stunned ‘The Gamekeeper,’ and became the victor. He was now deemed a match for Tom Oliver [q. v.], but in the fight, which took place on 17 May 1814, his luck for the first time deserted him. For a purse of fifty guineas he next entered the lists with John Shaw, the lifeguardsman, at Hounslow Heath, Middlesex, on 18 April 1815, when the height and weight of Shaw prevailed, after a well-contested fight lasting twenty-eight minutes. On 23 July 1817 Painter met Harry Sutton, ‘The Black,’ at Moulsey Hurst, and after forty-eight minutes found himself unable to continue the encounter. Not satisfied with the result, he again challenged Sutton to meet him at Bungay in Suffolk on 7 Aug. 1818. The event excited great interest, and, notwithstanding rainy weather, fifteen thousand persons assembled. There was a quadrangle of twenty-four feet for the combatants to engage in, with an outer roped ring for the officials. Outside this stood the spectators, several rows deep, and three circles of wagons surrounded the whole, giving the ring the appearance of an amphitheatre. In this encounter Sutton, although he fought with great spirit, yielded at the close of the fifteenth round. At Stepney, on 21 March 1817, Painter undertook for a wager to throw half a hundredweight against Mr. Donovan, a man of immense proportions, and beat him by eighteen inches and a half. He was equally good at running. On 7 Nov. 1817, on the Essex Road, in a five-mile race against an athlete named Spring, he ran the distance in thirty-five minutes and a half.
The well-known Thomas Winter Spring was the next to engage with Painter, the fight coming off on Mickleham Downs, Surrey, on 1 April 1818; when, after thirty-one rounds, occupying eighty-nine minutes, the newcomer was victorious. The same men were then matched to fight on 7 Aug. 1818, at Russia Farm, five miles from Kingston. In the first round Spring was floored by a blow over the eye, from which, although he continued fighting to the forty-second round, he never completely recovered. Painter now became landlord of the Anchor, Lobster Lane, Norwich, and intended to fight no more, but on 17 July 1820 again met his old opponent, Tom Oliver, at North Walsham, and on this occasion was the victor. It is remarkable that Painter in the first attempt was defeated by Oliver, Sutton, and Spring, but that in each case on another trial he proved to be the conqueror. For many years he lived at the Anchor, then removed to the White Hart Inn, Market Place, Norwich. He died at the residence of his son, ‘near the Ram,’ Lakenham, Norwich, on 18 Sept. 1852, and was buried in St. Peter's churchyard on 22 Sept.
[Miles's Pugilistica, 1880, ii. 74–88, with portrait, but the dates of his birth and death are both incorrect; Fights for the Championship, by the editor of Bell's Life in London, 1860, pp. 51–3, 55–7, 60–2; Fistiana, by the editor of Bell's Life in London (1864), p. 94; The Fancy, by an Operator, 1826, i. 393–400, with portrait; Bell's Life in London, 26 Sept. 1852, p. 7.]
PAINTER, WILLIAM (1540?–1594), author, is said to have sprung from a Kentish family, but he is described in the Cambridge University register in 1554 as a native of Middlesex, and may possibly have been son of William Painter, citizen and woolcomber, of London, who applied about 1543 for the freedom of the city. He matriculated as a sizar from St. John's College, Cambridge, in November 1554. On the 30th of the same month he was admitted both clockkeeper of the college and a scholar on the Lady Margaret's foundation. In 1556 he received a scholarship on the Beresford foundation, but he seems to have left the university without a degree. Before 1560 he became headmaster of the school at Sevenoaks, despite the regulations which required ‘the grammar master’ to be a bachelor of arts in some university. With the post went a house and a salary of 50l. a year. On 25 April 1560 he was ordained deacon by Grindal, bishop of London. In February 1560–1 he left Sevenoaks to assume the office of clerk of the ordnance in the Tower of London. That office he retained till his death, residing near the Tower; and he managed to acquire a substantial private fortune by borrowing freely from the public funds under his control. He purchased two manors in the parish of Gillingham, Kent, viz., East-Court and Twidall. In 1586 his proceedings excited the suspicions of the government, and he and two colleagues were ordered to refund to the treasury a sum of 7,075l. Painter confessed that he owed the queen 1,079l. 17s. 3d. In 1587 he was reported to have made false entries in his accounts in collusion with Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick [q. v.], master of the ordnance. In 1591 Painter's son Anthony confessed to irregularities committed by his father and himself at the ordnance office; but when Painter's offences were more specifically defined as the sale of war material for his own profit in 1575 and 1576, he denied the truth of the ‘slanderous informations.’ Painter made a nuncupative will
