Edgbaston, Birmingham, which he soon exchanged for that of St. Mary's, Moseley. He was also assistant, and then second master, in King Edward's School, Birmingham; and on 6 May 1807 was appointed high master of the Manchester grammar school, a position he retained for thirty years. An enduring memorial of the success which distinguished his career as a schoolmaster exists in the third volume of the ‘Admission Register of the Manchester School,’ which was edited by his eldest son. While at Manchester he held successively the curacies of St. Mark's, Cheetham Hill, St. George's, Carrington, and Sacred Trinity, Salford, and the incumbency of St. Peter's, Manchester (1813–25), and the rectory of St. Ann's in the same town (1822–1837). He also held the small vicarage of Great Wilbraham, near Cambridge, from 1832 to 1847, and was from 1824 one of the four ‘king's preachers’ for Lancashire, a sinecure office which was abolished in 1845. His sole publication was a sermon preached before the North Worcester volunteers in 1805.
He died at Brewood on 21 Dec. 1854. There is a portrait of him, from a miniature by G. Hargreaves, in the ‘History of the Foundations in Manchester’ (vol. ii. 1831), and in the ‘Manchester School Register’ (vol. iii.). Another portrait, by Colman, is in the possession of the family.
He married, at King's Norton, Worcestershire, on 27 July 1811, Felicia, daughter of William Anderton of Moseley Wake Green, by whom he had eight children.
His eldest son, Jeremiah Finch Smith (1815–1895), was rector of Aldridge, Staffordshire, from 1849, rural dean of Walsall from 1862, and prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral. He published, besides many sermons and tracts, the valuable and admirably edited ‘Admission Register of the Manchester School,’ 3 vols., 1866–1874, and ‘Notes on the Parish of Aldridge, Staffordshire,’ 1884–9, 2 pts. (Manchester Guardian, 17 Sept. 1895).
The third son, James Hicks Smith (1822–1881), barrister-at-law, was author of: 1. ‘Brewood, a Résumé, Historical and Topographical,’ 1867. 2. ‘Reminiscences of Thirty Years, by an Hereditary High Churchman,’ 1868. 3. ‘Brewood Church, the Tombs of the Giffards,’ 1870. 4. ‘The Parish in History, and in Church and State,’ 1871. 5. ‘Collegiate and other Ancient Manchester,’ 1877 (Manchester Guardian, 4 Jan. 1882; Church Review, 6 Jan. 1882).
Isaac Gregory Smith (b. 1827), prebendary of Hereford Cathedral, and John George Smith (b. 1829), barrister-at-law, were respectively fourth and fifth sons.
[Manchester School Register (Chetham Soc.), vol. iii.; Simms's Bibliotheca Staffordiensis, 1894.]
SMITH or SMYTHE, Sir JOHN (1534?–1607), diplomatist and military writer, born about 1534, was eldest son of Sir Clement Smith or Smythe, who resided at Little Baddow, near Chelmsford, Essex; owned the manor of Rivenhall and other property in the same county; was knighted in 1547; was ‘chidden’ by Edward VI for hearing mass in 1550; and died at Little Baddow on 26 Aug. 1552 (Morant, Essex; Nichols, Lit. Remains of Edward VI, pp. cccvi, 310). Sir Clement married Dorothy, youngest daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolf Hall, Wiltshire, and sister of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset [q. v.], and of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's queen [see Jane]. John was thus first cousin of Edward VI, but he fully cherished the Roman catholic sentiments with which his father imbued him. Wood states that he was educated at Oxford, ‘but in what House 'tis difficult to find, because both his names are very common.’ The ascertained facts of Sir John Smith's career render it impossible to identify him with any of the three Oxford graduates named John Smith who matriculated between 1537 and 1551. It is certain that he took no degree. Dissatisfied with the protestant policy that was favoured by his royal cousin and by his mother's family, he probably left England at an early age to seek his fortune abroad. According to his own account, he served as a volunteer or soldier of fortune in France while Edward VI was still king (Discourses, p. 23). For nearly twenty years following he maintained like relations with foreign armies and saw active service not only in France, but in the Low Countries, where he enlisted under the Spanish flag, and in the east of Europe. In 1566 he fought against the Turks in Hungary, and came under the notice of the Emperor Maximilian II. A man of much general intelligence, he became an expert linguist, especially in Spanish, and lost no opportunity of studying the art of war as practised by the chief generals of the continent. Despite his catholic predilections, he remained devotedly attached to the interests of his own country, and often disavowed sympathy with catholic priests.
In 1572 the queen granted him the manor of Little Baddow, with the advowson of the church there (Morant, ii. 21); and in 1574 he received, through Sir Henry Lee, while still abroad, an invitation from the English government to return home and enter the government service. ‘Refusing very great entertainments that he was offered by certain
