Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/153

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136
BLAKENEY—BLANCHARD.

of the late Right Rev. Dr. Cronyn Bishop of Huron.


BLAKENEY, The Rev. Richard Paul, D.D., LL.D., born in Roscommon, June 2, 1820, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, taking a first-class place in theology in 1843. He was appointed to the curacy of St. Paul's, Nottingham, in June, 1843; to the vicarage of Ison-Green, Nottinghamshire, in June, 1844; and in Jan., 1852, to the vicarage of Christ Church, Claughton, Birkenhead, which he resigned in 1874, on being appointed vicar of Bridlington, Yorkshire. In 1868 the Senatus of the University of Edinburgh conferred on him the degree of D.D. honoris causâ. Dr. Blakeney has written largely on the controversy with the Catholic Church. Among his works are a "Manual of Romish Controversy," 1851, which has reached its tenth edition; "The Book of Common Prayer in its History and Interpretation," 1865—2nd ed. 1866; 3rd ed. 1870; "Catechism of the Prayer Book," 1869; and a "Protestant Catechism," 1851, which has passed through sixty editions.


BLAKESLEY, The Very Rev. Joseph Williams, B.D., the son of a London merchant, was born in 1808, and educated at St. Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1831 as 21st Wrangler and Senior Chancellor's Medallist. He was subsequently elected Fellow and Tutor of his college, and twice appointed select preacher before the university, in which capacity he preached the two courses of sermons on the Dispensation of Paganism and the Evidences of Christianity, published under the title "Conciones Academicæ." In 1845 he was presented by his college to the vicarage of Ware. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Regius Professorship of Divinity at Cambridge in 1850; was offered, but declined, the Regius Professorship of Modern History in 1860; was appointed a classical examiner in the University of London in 1861; and was presented by the Crown to a canonry in Canterbury Cathedral in 1863; after which he sat as Proctor for the Chapter of Canterbury in the Lower House of Convocation, and was named one of the Committee for revising the authorised version of the New Testament. In June, 1872, he was appointed Dean of Lincoln, and on the death of Bishop Thirlwall, was appointed by the Crown as his successor in the Senate of the University of London. Dean Blakesley, the reputed "Hertfordshire Incumbent" of the Times, has published "The Life of Aristotle, with a Critical Examination of some questions of Literary History," 1839; an edition of Herodotus in the "Bibliotheca Classica," 1854; "Four Months in Algeria, with a Visit to Carthage," 1859; and has been a contributor to several of the principal reviews.


BLANCHARD, Edward Leman, son of William Blanchard, who for thirty-five years was a distinguished comedian at Covent Garden Theatre, was born Dec. 11, 1820. Mr. E. L. Blanchard became a constant contributor to periodical and dramatic literature at a very early period of his life, and before his twenty-fifth year was known to the public as the editor of "Chambers's London Journal," the author of "Bradshaw's Descriptive Railway Guides," and a series of handbooks, tales, essays, dramas, farces, and burlesques, which showed the exercise of a ready pen in the service of publishers and managers. He afterwards edited Willoughby's "Shakspere," "England and Wales Delineated," and wrote the novels of "Temple Bar," and "Man without a Destiny," besides supplying Miss Emma Stanley and Mr. W. S. Woodin with some of the most popular "entertainments" perhaps ever brought before the public. In addition to a quantity of literary work of a miscellaneous character,