Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/446

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bishopric of Exeter. He was duly appointed to the see, supplicated for the degrees of B.D. and D.D. at Oxford on 26 May 1579, and was consecrated in the archiepiscopal chapel at Croydon on 2 Aug. 1579. As the bishopric had become of small value, Woolton was allowed to hold with it the place of 'arch-priest' at Haccombe in Devonshire (20 Oct. 1581) and the rectory of Lezant in Cornwall (1584).

Woolton remodelled the statutes at Exeter Cathedral. In 1581 he deprived Anthony Randal, parson of Lydford, a follower ' of the Family of Love,' and made others who were imbued with those doctrines recant in the cathedral. Many strong accusations, some amounting to fraudulent misgovernment, were made against his rule of the diocese to the archbishop of Canterbury in 1585, but his answers to the charges were satisfactory, although he was obliged to admit his comparative poverty, and to confess that he had placed his son 'for his lewdness in a common jayle with irons upon him.' His death took place at the palace, Exeter, on 13 March 1593-4, and he was buried in the cathedral on the south side of the choir on 20 March. The bishop was married and had a large family. His eldest son, John Woolton, M.A., a fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, placed a monumental inscription to his father's memory in the south lower of the cathedral; he retired from practice at Exeter to the estate of Pilland in the parish of Pilton, North Devon, which his father had purchased. Francis Godwin [q. v.], bishop successively of Llandaff and Hereford, married Bishop Woolton's daughter. Woolton was author of the following theological treatises: 1. 'An Armour of Proofs,' 1576. 2. 'A Treatise of the Immortalitie of the Soule,' 1578; the dedication to 'Lady Bryget, Countesse of Bedforde,' mentions her husband's kindnesses to him. 3. 'The Christian Manuell,' 1576; reprinted by the Parker Society, 1851. 4. 'The Castell of Christians and Fortresse of the Faithfull,' n.d. [1577]: the dedication to Walsingham is dated 'the last day of May 1577.' 5. 'A new Anatomie of the whole Man,' 1576. 6. 'Of the Conscience: a Discourse,' 1570. 7. 'David's Chain;' said to have been dedicated to the Earl of Bedford.

John Vowell, alias Hooker, dedicated to Woolton, as bishop, and to the dean and chapter, his 'Catalog of the Bishops of Excester.'

[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, i. 600–1; Wood's Fasti, i. 146, 214; Raines's Manchester Rectors and Wardens (Chetham Soc. new ser. vol. v.), pp. 84–9; Le Neve's Fasti, i. 379; Rymer's Fœdera, xv. 752; Oliver's Exeter City, p. 204; Oliver's Exeter Bishops, pp. 140–2, 272; Stubbs's Reg. Sacrum Anglic. p. 85; Churton's Nowell, pp. 255–9 and pedigree; Oliver's Eccl. Antiquities in Devon, 1840, i. 40, 161; Strype's Annals, iii. i. 31–2; Strype's Whitgift, i. 419–22, iii. 153–60.]

W. P. C.


WOOTTON. [See also Wotton.]


WOOTTON, JOHN (1678?–1765), animal and landscape painter, was born about 1678. He studied under John Wyck [q. v.], and first became known at Newmarket, where he painted the portraits of all the favourite racehorses of his time. He was equally successful as a painter of dogs, also of hunting and battle pieces and equestrian portraits. During the latter part of his career he painted many landscapes in the style of Claude and Gaspar Poussin. Wootton was one of the most esteemed artists of the period, and his works, which are usually on a large scale, are to be met with in many of the great county houses. Some admirable hunting pieces by him are preserved at Althorp and Longleat. In the royal collection are his ‘Stag Hunt in Windsor Park,’ ‘Siege of Tournay,’ ‘Siege of Lille,’ and portrait of the Duke of Cumberland, with the battle of Dettingen in the background. His portrait of Flying Childers, the fleetest horse that ever ran, is the property of Messrs. Tattersall. Five of his pictures which belonged to Sir Robert Walpole were engraved for Boydell's ‘Houghton Gallery.’ In 1726 Wootton published, by subscription, a set of four plates of his hunting subjects, engraved by B. Baron, and another set of seven, engraved by P. C. Canot, appeared in 1770. His portrait of the Duke of Cumberland, with the battle of Culloden in the background, was engraved by Baron, and that of Tregonwell Frampton, the ‘father of the turf,’ by J. Faber. Wootton made the designs for the majority of the plates in the first volume of the first edition of Gay's ‘Fables,’ 1727. His collections were sold in 1761, and he died at his house in Cavendish Square, London, in January 1765.

[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Dallaway and Wornum; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers, ed. Armstrong; Vertue's collections in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 23076, ff. 21, 23; Cat. of Sports and Arts Exhibition, 1891.]

F. M. O'D.


WORBOISE, EMMA JANE, afterwards Mrs. Guyton (1825–1887), author, the eldest child of George Baddeley Worboise and his wife, Maria Lane (her father possessed pro-