Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/254

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or soon after 1823, was caused by an old wall falling on him while he was sketching.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Roget's Hist. of the ‘Old Watercolour’ Society; exhibition catalogues.]

F. M. O'D.


SAMUEL, RICHARD (fl. 1770–1786), portrait-painter, twice obtained the gold medal of the Society of Arts for the best original historical drawing, and in 1773 was awarded a premium for an improvement in laying mezzotint grounds, but there is no record of his having practised this art. From 1772 to 1779 he contributed to the Royal Academy exhibitions portraits, small whole-lengths, heads, and conversation pieces, with an occasional subject-piece. In 1784 he painted a large portrait of Robert Pollard [q. v.] the engraver, which is now in the National Portrait Gallery; this is a work of some distinction, painted somewhat in the manner of Gainsborough. In 1786 he published a short pamphlet ‘On the Utility of Drawing and Painting.’ A group of female portraits by him was engraved as ‘The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain.’ As none of his works show maturity in his art, it is probable that he died young.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1893; Catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery.]

L. C.


SAMUEL, WILLIAM (fl. 1551–1569), divine and poet, perhaps connected with the Samwells of Northampton (Burke's Commoners, i. 440), describes himself in 1551 as servant of the duke of Somerset, but from 1558 onwards as minister of Christ's church. He may have been father of William Samuell of Shevyock, Cornwall (Harl. Soc. ix. 196).

He wrote: 1. ‘The Love of God—here is declared, if you will rede—that God doth love this land indede—by felynge with his rod,’ no place, no date, 12mo, 4 leaves. 2. ‘The Abridgment of Goddes statutes in myter,’ London, 1551, b.l. 38 leaves (contains metrical abridgments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). 3. ‘An Abridgment, brief abstract or short sume of those bookes following taken out of the Bible and set into Sternhold's meter’ (Genesis to Kings inclusive, 1558?). 3. ‘An Abridgment of all the Canonical books of the Olde Testament,’ 1569, written in Sternhold's metre (all the Old Testament); at end, ‘The prophets thus are finished and books canonicall—apocrypha you shall have next if death do not me call.’ 4. ‘The grace from God the father hye,’ b.l. broadside, 8 stanzas, 1574 (Roxburghe Coll.). 5. ‘Preces pro afflicta ecclesia Anglicana’ (cf. Tanner, Bibl. Brit.). Samuel is also credited by Corser (Coll. Angl. Poet. i. 74) with ‘An answere to the proclamation of the rebels in the North,’ by W. S. London, 1569, 8vo; but at the end is ‘Finis quod William Seres [q. v.]’, who was probably the author as well as printer. It is distinct from the ‘Epistle’ of the same date by Thomas Norton (1532–1584) [q. v.]

[Parker Society's Select Poetry, pp. xxviii, 312; Brydges's Restituta, iii. 493; Ames's Typogr. Antiq., ed. Herbert, iii. 1597; Hazlitt's Handbook, p. 532; Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. p. 484.]

W. A. S.


SAMWAYS or SAMWAIES, PETER, D.D. (1615–1693), royalist divine, born at Eltham, Kent, in 1615, was the son of a ‘person about the court.’ He was educated at Westminster School, and was elected in 1634 to a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was admitted on 10 April 1635 (Addit. MS. 5851, f. 78 b). He graduated B.A. in 1637, was elected a fellow of his college in 1640, and commenced M.A. in 1641 (ib. 5846, f. 133 b). From the latter date till 1650 he was one of the college tutors. During his residence at Cambridge he contributed verses to the university collections of poems on the birth of the Princess Elizabeth in 1635, on the birth of Charles I's fifth child in 1637, on the birth of a prince in 1640, and on the king's return from Scotland in 1641.

In or before 1657 he became rector of Malden, Bedfordshire, and in 1659 he was chaplain to Elizabeth, countess of Peterborough. He was presented by Lord Salisbury to the vicarage of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, from which he was expelled by the parliamentary visitors because he persisted in reading the liturgy of the church of England (Clutterbuck, Hertfordshire, ii. 111). He was likewise deprived of his fellowship at Trinity.

After the Restoration he was created D.D. at Cambridge, by royal mandate, on 5 Sept. 1660 (Kennett, Register and Chronicle, pp. 207, 251), but he was not reinstated in his benefice at Cheshunt, probably because, on 31 Dec. 1660, he was presented to the rectory of Wath, near Ripon, Yorkshire, worth about 140l. per annum, by the Earl of Aylesbury, in whose family he had spent some time during the rebellion. Soon afterwards he was presented by Charles II to the neighbouring rectory of Bedale, worth nearly 600l. a year (Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, ii. 363). He was a great benefactor to the parish of Wath, where he built and endowed a school. On 27 May 1668 he was collated to the prebend of Barneby in