evils likely to result from delaying the divorce desired by the king, and again in 1536 he signed the articles of faith passed by convocation at the king's desire, which virtually acknowledge the royal supremacy. In his county he was justice of the peace, and also, in 1527, one of the commissioners appointed to take stock of all the corn in barns and stacks and see that it was put upon the market, the scarcity which was seriously felt that year being supposed to be due to forestalling, regrating, and engrossing. On Thomas Cromwell coming into power, Faringdon, like other abbots, thought it advisable to gain his favour, and, according to a common practice, paid him an annual pension of twenty marks. In 1535 the abbot, it is said, intended to have resigned in favour of the prior of Leominster, a cell of Reading, but changed his intention in consequence of the passing of the statute of abatement of pensions (26 Hen. VIII, c. 17).
When the commissioners to take the surrender of the monasteries visited Reading Abbey, they reported favourably of the abbot's willingness to conform, but the surrender of the abbey does not happen to be extant, and it is not therefore known whether Faringdon signed it. In 1539 Faringdon was indicted of high treason, being supposed to have assisted the northern rebels with money, and was executed at Reading on 14 Nov.
The chronicler Hall calls him ‘a stubborn monk and utterly without learning,’ but this may be prejudice. Browne Willis refers to his letters in the ‘Register of the University of Oxford,’ which, however, were not necessarily composed by him. The specimens of his correspondence preserved in the Public Record Office are but short and in English. He was at all events a patron of learning. Leonard Cox, the master of Reading grammar school, about 1524 dedicated a book on rhetoric to him as to one who ‘hathe allwayes tenderly favored the profyte of yonge studentes.’ Further, the expression of a correspondent of Lord Lisle's that the abbot ‘makes much of James Basset and plieth him to his learning both in Latin and French,’ does not convey the impression that he considered the abbot illiterate.
[Cal. State Papers, Hen. VIII, vols. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix.; Hall's Chronicle, f. 237 b; Wriothesley's Chronicle, i. 108, 109; Stow, p. 576; Browne Willis's Mitred Abbeys, i. 161; Burnet's Reformation, ed. Pocock, i. 3, 380, 381, 417, 428, 566, ii. 286, 315, 575, iii. 259; Leonard Coke's Arte or Crafte of Rhethoryke; Strype's Eccl. Mem. I. i. 211; Man's History of Reading, p. 272; Epist. Tigurinæ, cxlviii. 209; Lords' Journals, I. lxxvi. 59–125; Dugdale's Monasticon, iv. 32; Wright's Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Soc.), p. 226; Minute Books of Surveyors of Land-Augmentation Office, 313, B. ff. 7, 8; Controlment Roll, 31 Hen. VIII, Mich. term, No. 28 d, P.R.O.]
FARINGTON, GEORGE (1752–1788), artist, born at Leigh in Lancashire, his baptism being recorded on 10 Nov. 1752, was fourth son of the Rev. William Farington, vicar of that place, afterwards rector of Warrington. He was for many years a student of the Royal Academy, and obtained the silver medal in 1779, and in 1780 he won the gold medal for the best historical picture, the subject being ‘The Caldron Scene from Macbeth.’ He had in his early studies been guided by his brother Joseph [q. v.], the landscape-painter, but his preference being decidedly for historical subjects he became a pupil of West. Alderman Boydell gave him many commissions, and for him he made several excellent drawings from the Houghton collection. In 1782 he went to India, practising his art with great success. When making studies for a grand picture of the court of the nabob of Moorshedabad, he contracted a severe illness, and died at that place a few days later in 1788.
[Pilkington's Dict. of Painters; Leigh registers, kindly examined by Rev. J. H. Stanning.]
FARINGTON, JOHN (1603–1646), Franciscan. [See Woodcock.]
FARINGTON, JOSEPH (1747–1821), landscape-painter, son of the Rev. William Farington, vicar of Leigh and rector of Warrington, was born at Leigh in Lancashire on 21 Nov. 1747. He became a pupil of Richard Wilson in 1763, and, like his brother George [q. v.], gained several premiums at the Society of Arts. At the age of twenty-one he joined the Incorporated Society of Artists, and was admitted a student of the Royal Academy at its formation in 1768. He was elected an associate of the Academy in 1783 and full member in 1785, and in later years took an active and influential part in the government of that institution. In recognition of his share in promoting some financial reforms at the Academy the council voted 50l. for a piece of plate for him.
Redgrave says that ‘in his landscapes he has not shown much poetry or grandeur; his composition is poor; his colouring is better, often possessing power and brilliance; his pencilling is free and firm, but with a tendency to hardness.’ He is best known by two collections of engraved views of the English lakes, one containing twenty plates
