Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/408

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Stokes
401
Stokes

diately following he wrote ‘Discoveries in Australia, with an Account of the Coasts and Rivers explored and surveyed during the Voyage of the Beagle, 1837–1843’ (2 vols. 8vo, 1846). On 4 July 1846 he was advanced to post rank, and on 14 Oct. 1847 he was appointed to the Acheron, steam vessel, employed for the next four years on the survey of New Zealand. In the end of 1851 the Acheron was paid off at Sydney, and for a few years Stokes was on half-pay. From 1860 to 1863 he was employed in surveying the coasts of the Channel. He became a rear-admiral on 9 Feb. 1864, vice-admiral on 14 July 1871, admiral on 1 Aug. 1877, and died on 11 June 1885. He was twice married and left issue.

[O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict.; Times, 13 June 1885; Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, new ser. vol. vii.; Fitzroy's Adventure and Beagle; Navy Lists; Pasco's A Roving Commission, 1897, p. 102, with a portrait at p. 124.]

J. K. L.

STOKES, PETER (d. 1399), Carmelite, became a Carmelite friar at Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and, afterwards proceeding to Oxford, graduated there as doctor of divinity before 1382. During the religious troubles of that year Stokes acted as the representative of Archbishop Courtenay in the university. During Lent he had made an ineffectual complaint against Nicholas Hereford [see Nicholas], and in May he had a statement of Hereford's heresies drawn up by notaries (Fasciculi Zizaniorum, pp. 296, 305). On 28 May the archbishop sent him a list of twenty-four heresies extracted from Wiclif's writings, and directed him to publish it in the university. Robert Rygge [q. v.], the chancellor, opposed Stokes in the matter, and on 5 June, when Philip Repington [q. v.] preached at St. Frideswide's, Stokes was prevented from publication by fear of violence. On 10 June Stokes determined against Repington, but on the following day left Oxford at the summons of the archbishop. He had already reported what had happened in a letter to Courtenay on 6 June, and was now present in the council on 12 June, when Rygge was condemned. The royal letter of 13 July specially forbade Rygge to molest Stokes further. Stokes, however, appears to have withdrawn from Oxford to Hitchin, where he died on 18 July 1399. A contemporary rhymester describes Stokes as

Rufus naturaliter et veste dealbatus,
Omnibus impatiens et nimis elatus.

(Pol. Songs, i. 267, Rolls Ser.). Stokes is credited with various quæstiones, conclusiones, and lecturæ. He also wrote a work in defence of William Ockham [q. v.], which Leland says was extant in his days, and ‘Præconia Sacræ Scripturæ,’ which the same writer describes as ‘opus non contemnendum.’ But the only one of Stokes's writings which seems to have survived is his letter to Archbishop Courtenay on 6 June 1382; it is printed in ‘Fasciculi Zizaniorum,’ pp. 300–1.

[Fasciculi Zizaniorum; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 674; Villiers de St.-Étienne's Bibl. Carmelitana, ii. 601–2; Wood's Hist. and Antiq. of Univ. Oxon. i. 502–5, 508, 510.]

C. L. K.

STOKES, WILLIAM, M.D. (1804–1878), physician, was fifth child of Whitley Stokes, regius professor of medicine in the university of Dublin, and his wife Mary Anne, daughter of Hugh Picknell of Lough Gall, co. Armagh.

Whitley Stokes, M.D. (1763–1845), the father, was son of Gabriel Stokes, D.D., fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, prebendary of Elphin, chancellor of Waterford, and rector of Desart Martin in the diocese of Derry, and grandson of Gabriel Stokes, an engineer and deputy surveyor-general of Ireland in 1735, the first of the family to settle in Ireland. Whitley was born in 1763, entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1779, obtained a scholarship in 1781, and was elected a fellow in his twenty-fifth year. He proceeded to the degree of bachelor of medicine in 1789, and to that of doctor in 1793. As a young man he joined the United Irishmen, and won the admiration of Wolfe Tone, who designated him the fitting ‘head of a system of national education’ should Ireland become independent (Tone's Autobiography). Although Stokes denied that he had any connection with the Society of United Irishmen after 1792, he was suspended for three years from all functions as a tutor on the ground of his political opinions in 1798, when Lord Clare made his visitation of Trinity College. But Stokes soon regained the confidence of his colleagues. He was elected a senior fellow in 1805 and lecturer in natural history in 1816. He became regius professor of medicine in 1830, resigning in 1843. He died at his residence in Harcourt Street, Dublin, on 13 April 1845. He married, in 1782, Mary Anne, daughter of Hugh Picknell of Lough Gall, co. Armagh, and had nine children.

The son, William, who was born in Dublin in 1804, was educated in classics and mathematics by John Walker, a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and in science by his father. He studied medicine and graduated in 1825 at Edinburgh. On his return in the same