appointment as an actor and comedian at the Theatre Royal from the lord chamberlain to protect himself from the execution of a writ (Lysons, Environs of London, ii. 285). Among his pupils were Henry, third lord Coleraine; Francis, earl of Huntingdon; Robert, viscount Kilmorey, who died at the school in 1717; Sir Jeremy Sambroke, William Sloane, and another nephew of Sir Hans (Sloane MS. 4064). Uvedale, who had proceeded M.A. in 1666, became LL.D. of Cambridge in 1682, and was invited to contribute the life of Dion to the translation of Plutarch, edited by Dryden, Somers, and others, published between 1683 and 1686. Uvedale's portion appeared in 1684.
As a horticulturist Uvedale earned a reputation for his skill in cultivating exotics, being one of the earliest possessors of hothouses in England. In an ‘Account of several Gardens near London’ written by J. Gibson in 1691 (Archæologia, 1794, xii. 188), the writer says: ‘Dr. Uvedale of Enfield is a great lover of plants, and, having an extraordinary art in managing them, is become master of the greatest and choicest collection of exotic greens that is perhaps anywhere in this land. His greens take up six or seven houses or roomsteads. His orange-trees and largest myrtles fill up his biggest house, and … those more nice and curious plants that need closer keeping are in warmer rooms, and some of them stoved when he thinks fit. His flowers are choice, his stock numerous, and his culture of them very methodical and curious.’ In 1696 his neighbour, Archbishop Tillotson, appointed Uvedale to the rectory of Orpington, Kent, with the chapelry of St. Mary Cray, but he appears not to have resided. In Nichols's ‘Literary Illustrations’ (iii. 321–51) are sixty letters from Uvedale to Dr. Richardson of North Bierley, bearing date between 1695 and 1721, mainly referring to the exchange of plants. In May 1699 he writes of seventeen of his household having had the small-pox within the preceding three months, eleven, including six of his own children, being down together; and in December 1721, when over seventy-nine, he speaks of being attacked for the first time by gout, so that his garden was neglected, all the exercise he could take being ‘rumbling about four or five miles every day before dinner in [his] chariot,’ and his chief remaining pleasure consisting ‘in turning over’ his ‘Hortus Siccus.’ He died at Enfield on 17 Aug. 1722, and was buried in the parish church.
Uvedale married Mary (1656–1740), second daughter of Edward Stephens of Charrington, Gloucestershire, granddaughter of Sir Matthew Hale. By her he had five daughters and three sons: Robert Uvedale, D.D., fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, vicar of Enfield from 1721 till his death in 1731; James Uvedale, M.A., rector of Bishop's Cleeve, Gloucestershire; and Samuel Uvedale, B.A., rector of Barking, Suffolk, and father of Admiral Samuel Uvedale (d. 1808), who served with Rodney.
After his death Uvedale's growing plants were mostly sold to Sir Robert Walpole for his collection at Houghton (Loudon, Arboretum, p. 61), while his herbarium, in fourteen thick volumes, forms vols. 302–15 of the Sloane collection. It contains plants not only from Sherard, Richardson, Petiver, Plukenet, Robart, Rand, Dale, Doody, Sloane, and Du Bois, but also from Tournefort, Magnol, Vaillant, and other continental botanists, carefully labelled by Uvedale, who was obviously a botanist, and not, as Dawson Turner suggests (loc. cit.), merely a florist. Petiver founded a genus Uvedalia in Uvedale's honour, which, however, became Polymnia Uvedalia of Linné, and Robert Brown gave the same name to a group merged by De Candolle in the genus Mimulus, one species being unhappily named M. Uvedaliæ.
Thomas Uvedale (fl. 1712), brother of the preceding, published in an English translation ‘Memoirs of Philip de Comines,’ London, 2 vols. 1712, 8vo (2nd ed. 1720; reissued in ‘Military Classics,’ 1817). He resided at Hampton Wick, and there are two letters from him to Sloane in the British Museum (Sloane MS. 4064), and some plants, endorsed as from ‘Dr. Uvedale, Hampton Court,’ in the twelfth volume of Sloane's ‘Herbarium.’
[Robinson's Hist. of Enfield, pp. 103–18; Journal of Botany, 1891, pp. 9–18, and other authorities there cited.]
UVEDALE, Sir WILLIAM (1455–1524), soldier and courtier, of Wickham, Hampshire, was the son and heir of Sir Thomas Uvedale of Wickham, and of Titsey, Surrey, high sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1437 and 1464. The family name appears from the oldest deeds to have been D'Ovedale or D'Ouvedale. Other variations of the name are Uvedall, Uvedail, Vuedall, Udall, Woodall, and Woodhall. A writer in a sixteenth-century manuscript [see Uvedale, John], desirous of identifying the Uvedale family with that of Wodehall, Cumberland, says, ‘Thei call the name Woddall, and some call it Udall, and some Wodhall.’
William was born in 1455, and on 10 May 1483 was appointed to the command of Por-
