Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/200

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

delayed for some time by Barbary pirates cruising in the neighbourhood. Reaching Athens in October, they stayed there four weeks, during which time Borone was accidentally killed, falling from a window in his sleep. Visiting Zante, Sibthorp purchased from a local apothecary a complete herbarium of the island flora with modern Greek names to the specimens, and in February 1795 he and Hawkins visited the Morea, going to Argos, Mycenæ, Elis, and the site of Sparta, ascending Mount Taygetus, and not returning to Zante till April. Hawkins then returned to Greece, but Sibthorp on 1 May started for Otranto. Bad weather extended the voyage to twenty-four days. He touched at Kephalonia and Prevesa on the mainland, and visited the ruins of Nicopolis, where he caught a cold which brought on consumption. Returning home overland from Ancona, he tried the climate of Devonshire without success, and then moved to Bath, where he died on 8 Feb. 1796. He was buried in Bath Abbey.

By his will Sibthorp bequeathed to the university of Oxford all his books on natural history and agriculture, together with an estate at South Leigh, Oxfordshire, the proceeds of which were to be devoted, first, to the publication of his ‘Flora Græca,’ in ten folio volumes, each with a hundred plates by Bauer, and of an octavo ‘Prodromus’ to the work, without plates, and then to the endowment of a chair of rural economy. For this work he had collected three thousand species; but he left nothing complete beyond Bauer's figures and the plan of the ‘Prodromus.’ The ‘Flora Oxoniensis,’ however, shows Sibthorp to have been a thoroughly critical botanist. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1789. At the death of his father in 1797 Sibthorp's correspondence came into the possession of his sister Lady Sewell, and at her death was sold to a paper mill as waste paper (Druce, op. cit. p. 390). His collection of plants is preserved at Oxford.

Besides the ‘Flora Oxoniensis,’ Sibthorp's only work was his share in the posthumous ‘Flora Græca’ and ‘Floræ Græcæ Prodromus.’ The latter was issued in 2 vols. 8vo, in 1806 and 1813 respectively, by Dr. James Edward Smith, to whom it was entrusted by Sibthorp's executors. Of the ‘Flora Græca Sibthorpiana’ six volumes were issued by Smith between 1806 and his death in 1828, the seventh being published in 1830. The eighth, ninth, and tenth volumes, edited by Dr. John Lindley, were published between 1833 and 1840, the entire cost of the work exceeding 30,000l. Only thirty complete copies of this edition were issued to subscribers, the price of each being 240 guineas. There were in all 966 plates, which were engraved by James Sowerby. A reissue of forty more copies at 63l. each was published by Bohn in 1845–6, under the supervision of Dr. Daubeny.

[Gent. Mag. 1805, ii. 995 (epitaph); Chalmers's Biogr. Dict.; English Cyclopædia; Rees's Cyclopædia, article by Sir J. E. Smith; Nichols's Illustrations, vi. 838; Allibone's Dict. of English Lit.]

G. S. B.


SIBTHORP, RICHARD WALDO (1792–1879), divine, born at Canwick Hall, near Lincoln, on 4 Oct. 1792, was fifth and youngest son of Colonel Humphry Waldo Sibthorp, M.P. for Lincoln, by his wife Susannah, daughter of Richard Ellison, esq., of Sudbrooke Holme, Lincolnshire. Colonel Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp [q. v.] was his brother. After a preliminary training in a private school at Eltham, Kent, he was sent to Westminster school, which he entered on 25 March 1807 (Barker and Stenning, Westminster School Register, p. 209). He matriculated from University College, Oxford, on 12 Dec. 1809, and in 1810 he was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College. Attracted from youth by the Roman catholic faith, he in October term 1811 went to Wolverhampton, where he spent two days with Bishop Milner, with the intention of entering the Roman communion, but he was brought back, under police surveillance and chancery order, by his elder brother. He graduated B.A. in 1813, received Anglican orders in 1815, and was appointed curate of Waddington and Harmston, Lincolnshire. There he ‘preached with all the enthusiasm of a Whitefield.’ He commenced M.A. in 1816, and afterwards became curate to John Scott, incumbent of St. Mary's Church, Hull. In 1818 he was elected a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and in 1819 became vicar of Tattersall, Lincolnshire. He proceeded B.D. in 1823. In 1825 he took the charge of Percy proprietary chapel, St. Pancras, London, and was subsequently evening lecturer at St. John's Chapel, Bedford Row [see Noel, Baptist Wriothesley]. At this period he was recognised as one of the leaders of the London ‘evangelicals.’

In 1829 he gave up his connection with London chapels and went to reside on his fellowship at Magdalen College. From 1830 to 1841 he was incumbent of St. James's Church, Ryde, Isle of Wight. On resigning the living he was received into the Roman catholic church, at St. Mary's College, Oscott, on 27 Oct. 1841, by Bishop (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman. Clerical conversions to