Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/255

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the church of York (Willis, Survey of Cathedrals, i. 117). He was a staunch supporter of the church of England, and it is recorded of him that he boldly disputed the doctrine of transubstantiation with the Duke of York (afterwards James II). He fell under the displeasure of Bishop Cartwright, then administering the see of York, by refusing to subscribe the king's declaration for liberty of conscience in 1688, and he narrowly escaped a second ejection from his benefices. Samways further aided the cause of civil and religious liberty by publishing a letter, which had a considerable effect in persuading the clergy of his neighbourhood to take the oaths to King William and Queen Mary, and for this service he is said to have received an offer of the bishopric of Bath and Wells which he declined. Among his intimate friends were Dr. Isaac Barrow and Archbishops Ussher and Sancroft. He died at Bedale in April 1693.

His works are: 1. ‘Devotion digested: In Severall Discourses and Meditations upon the Lords most holy Prayer,’ London [28 July], 1652, 12mo. 2. ‘The wise and faithful Steward, or a Narration of the exemplary Death of Mr. Benjamin Rhodes, Steward to the … Earl of Elgin. … Together with some remarkable Passages concerning Mrs. Anne Rhodes his Wife,’ London, 1657, 8vo. 3. ‘The Church of Rome not sufficiently vindicated from her Apostasie, Heresie, and Schism,’ 1663, 12mo. 4. ‘The Penitent's Humble Address to the Throne of Grace, in his deep Reflections on the Sufferings of the Nation in general; and particularly in the Apprehension of the late dreadful Devastation made in London by the Fire there,’ 1666, 12mo.

[Addit. MS. 5880, f. 154; Le Neve's Fasti, ed. Hardy, iii. 171; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, ii. 161; Welch's Alumni Westmon. ed. Phillimore, p. 106; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 838.]


SAMWELL, DAVID (d. 1799), surgeon, was the son of William Samuel, vicar of Nantglyn, and therefore grandson of Edward Samuel [q. v.] of Llangar. He sailed with Captain Cook on his third voyage of discovery as surgeon's first mate on the Resolution. On the death of William Anderson he succeeded John Law as surgeon of the Discovery. In this capacity he was an eye-witness of Cook's death, of which he wrote an account for ‘Biographica Britannica;’ this was published separately in 1786 as ‘A Narrative of the Death of Captain James Cook.’ In later life Samwell was a prominent member of the Welsh literary circle of London; he was secretary of the Gwyneddigion Society in 1788, and vice-president in 1797. His assistance is acknowledged in the preface to Pughe's edition (1789) of the poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym [see David], and in October 1796 he contributed to the first volume of the ‘Cambrian Register’ a biographical and critical notice of Huw Morris or Morus [q. v.] (pp. 426–39). Some of his poems are preserved in Brit. Mus. MSS. Addit. 14957 and 15056. He died in the autumn of 1799, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew's, Holborn. An elegy on him, by Thomas Edwards (‘Twm o'r Nant’), was printed in ‘Diliau Barddas’ (1827).

[Leathart's History of the Gwyneddigion, 1831; Eos Ceiriog, 1823, introd. p. xv; elegy in Diliau Barddas; Byegones for 8 Jan. 1890; Cook's Voyages.]


SANCHO, IGNATIUS (1729–1780), negro writer, was born in 1729 on board a ship engaged in the slave trade while on the journey from Guinea to the Spanish West Indies. At Carthegena, in South America, a Portuguese bishop baptised him in the name of Ignatius. His mother soon died owing to the climate, and his father committed suicide. At two years old he was brought to England, and was made over to three maiden ladies, who lived at Greenwich. They deemed it imprudent to give him any education, and subjected him to a rigorous discipline. A fancied resemblance to Don Quixote's Squire led them to give him the surname of Sancho. He is conjectured to have sat to Hogarth in 1742 for the negro boy in ‘Taste in High Life’ (Hogarth, Works, ed. Nichols and Steevens, ii. 158, iii. 333). He rebelled against his servitude. John Montagu, second duke of Montagu, who lived at Blackheath and visited the ladies whom Sancho served, took notice of him, and deemed his capacity above his station. The duke lent him books, and he read them with avidity. His mistresses grew more exacting, and after 1749, when his ducal benefactor died, he fled for protection to the duke's widow. She took him into her service as butler, and the post proved so profitable that at her death in 1751 he boasted of possessing 70l. and an annuity of 30l. A passion for gambling, which he managed to suppress, temporarily embarrassed him, and he made some effort to appear on the stage as Othello or Oronooko, but failed to obtain an engagement owing to his defective articulation. He soon resumed service with the Montagu family, and George, the fourth duke [q. v.], his first benefactor's son-in-law, treated him with every consideration. He now enjoyed abundant opportunities of satisfying his literary predilections. He read, on their first publication, the sermons and ‘Tristram Shandy’