cushions placed to support him in the pulpit, and actually preached on his knees. He nevertheless, in the hope of regaining strength, went on a pastoral tour through the upper provinces, travelling by water, in the month of July. At Bhagulpoor, however, he was obliged to retrace his course, and being ordered by his physician to get out to sea, he was put on board the Marquis Huntly, a company's ship, which was to take him to Penang. On board that vessel he died on the 22nd of August, 1828, in his forty-third year. His life, written by his brother, was published in 1830.—R. H.
JAMES, Richard, a divine of the Church of England, was a native of Newport in the Isle of Wight, where he was born in 1592, and was educated in Corpus Christi college, Oxford, where he took his degree of B.A. in 1611. He was the nephew of Dr. Thomas James, the learned first librarian of Sir Thomas Bodley, and like him spent his life in libraries—an enthusiastic devotee of books and manuscripts. He preached and published several university sermons, of three of which it was remarked that one was without a text, another against the text, and a third beside it. He assisted Selden in his Marmora Arundeliana, and was appointed by Sir Robert Cotton to the charge of his invaluable library, upon the arrangement of which he bestowed indefatigable pains. His published writings were of no great importance; but he left behind him forty-five MSS., partly original and partly collected from rare and ancient authors, which were afterwards deposited in the Bodleian library where they are still preserved. They relate chiefly to antiquities and history, including a "Decanonizatio Thomæ Cantuarensis," of which his uncle told Usher that his kinsman "has plainly showed therein, both out of Becket's own writings and those of his time, that he was not an arch-saint, but an arch-rebel, and that the papists have been not a little deceived by him." He died in 1638.—P. L.
JAMES, Robert, an English physician, known principally for his preparation of a fever-powder, which for nearly a century continued to be one of the most popular of nostrums, was born at Kinverston in Staffordshire in 1703, and was educated at St. John's college, Oxford. After practising successively at Sheffield, Lichfield, and Birmingham, he removed to London, where he published in 1743 his "Medicinal Dictionary," 3 vols. Dr. Johnson had a hand in the composition of this work, and it was translated into French by Diderot in 1746-48. James also wrote "The Practice of Physic," 1746; "On Canine Madness," 1760; "A Dispensary," 1764; "A Dissertation upon Fevers," 1778; and "A Short Treatise of the Disorders of Children," 1778. He died in London, 23rd March, 1776. His celebrated fever-powder, the invention of which was attributed by some to a German of the name of Schawanberg, found no favour with many medical practitioners; but, notwithstanding their opposition, it commanded so extensive a sale as to become a mine of wealth to James and his family. Coarse in his manners as well as in his person, James had yet many of the qualities of an agreeable companion. Johnson, in his Life of Smith, notices him in this character. "At this man's table (Mr. Walmsley's)," says the great lexicographer, "I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours with companions such as are not often found—with one who has lengthened and one who has gladdened life—with Dr. James, whose skill in physic will be long remembered, and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have gratified with this character of our common friend; but what are the hopes of man!" Of the virtues of the fever-powder James wrote a vindication, which appeared after his death.
JAMES, Thomas, D.D., was born at Newport, Isle of Wight, in 1571, and studied at New college, Oxford. In 1602 he was made first keeper of the Bodleian library. He was a devoted student of old MSS., and laboured hard to discover the interpolations and forgeries which abound in patristic writings. As member of the convocation which met with parliament at Oxford under Charles I., he proposed the appointment of a commission to examine all patristic MSS. in public and private English libraries. Dr. James died at Holywell, Oxford, in 1629. His literary labours were very numerous. His first publication appears to have been the "Philobiblion of Richard of Durham," in 1599, followed by "Eclogæ Oxonio-Cantabrigienses," which contains a catalogue of MSS. at Oxford and Cambridge. The same year he published his "Bellum Papale," which exhibits all the variations in the editions of the Vulgate put forth by Sixtus V. and Clement VIII. In 1605 he printed a catalogue of books in the Bodleian, which he afterwards enlarged. In 1611 he brought out his well-known treatise of the corruption of the scripture, councils, and fathers, by the church of Rome.—B. H. C.
JAMES, Thomas, an English navigator of the seventeenth century, was recommended to Charles I. by the merchants of Bristol, who had engaged his services in the attempt to discover a north-west passage to the Indies—the great problem of English enterprise in that day, as it continued to be during the two succeeding centuries, until, in fact, it received its solution. James was despatched on this enterprise in the same year (1631) in which the London merchants employed Luke Fox on a similar undertaking.—(See Fox, Luke.) James sailed from Bristol; and after entering Hudson Bay, where he fell in with Fox, visited for the first time the southward extension of that sea, which derives from him the name it has since borne on our charts i.e. James Bay. He and his crew passed a severe and tedious winter upon Charlton Island (lat. 52°) within this bay. They were released from the ice in the following July, and sailed thence to the northward, past the western shores of Hudson Bay, not advancing, however, beyond the parallel of 65° 30´, where the continued obstructions encountered from the ice induced their return to England, which, they reached in October, 1632. James gave to the land on the western side of Hudson Bay the name of New Wales (North and South), in compliment to the prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II. He was favourably received by the king on his return, and in the following year published an interesting narrative of his voyage, under the title of "The strange and dangerous voyage of Captain Thomas James, in his intended discovery of the north-west passage into the South Sea." James had been led to form an opinion adverse to the hopes of those who looked for the discovery of the passage in question. Although not accomplishing anything of importance in respect of this object, his services as a discoverer were by no means devoid of value.—W. H.
JAMES, Sir William, a distinguished naval officer, was born about 1721. He went to sea at the age of twelve, and entering at twenty-six the naval service of the East India Company, was appointed in 1749 to the command of one of its vessels of war. In 1751 he received the chief command of the company's naval forces. In 1755 he performed his chief achievement, the capture of Severndroog on the Concan coast—one of the strongholds of the pirate Angria, who molested the British commerce in these waters. After other important services he returned home, became a director of the East India Company, member of parliament for West Looe, and in 1778 was created a baronet. He died in 1785. A lofty tower, designated Severndroog, and erected by his widow on land which belonged to him, near the top of Shooter's Hill, commemorates his principal exploit.—F. E.
JAMES, William, was the author of what is now considered the standard history of the modern navy of Great Britain. Little, however, appears to be known of his biography. We glean the following items from his own preface to the second edition of his well-known work. Previously to 1813 he had resided in Jamaica as a proctor, and in that capacity, according to his own account, had been familiarized with many matters relating to ships. In 1813, as a British subject, he was a détenu in the United States, then at war with England. Irritated by what he considered the boastful tone of the Americans, in their references to and descriptions of the encounters between their vessels and those of England, James made minute inquiries respecting the relative forces of the ships engaged, and even procured the publication, in American papers, of the results of his investigations. For this offence he was on the point of being sent as a prisoner "to the interior." Effecting his escape from the United States, he arrived at the end of 1813 at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and published there in the March of 1816 a pamphlet on the subject in which he had now grown deeply interested, and with the title—"An inquiry into the merits of the principal naval actions between Great Britain and the United States." He arrived in England in the following June, and in 1818 issued an octavo volume entitled "A full and correct account of the naval occurrences of the late war between Great Britain and the United States;" returning to the charge, a twelvemonth afterwards, with a work on the "military occurrences" of the same war. In 1819 he resolved to write the work by which alone he is now known; and in 1822 appeared his "Naval history of Great Britain, from the declaration of war by France to the accession of George IV.," that is, from 1792 to 1820. Written
