and against much opposition and ignorant prejudice, he opened out the country by new roads, in the survey of which he himself took part. He drained the land, built shelters for the sheep, and largely contributed to bringing in the white-faced sheep of the Cheviots as a more profitable breed than the black-faced sheep of the district, some account of all which he published under the title of ‘A Treatise on Practical Store-farming as applicable to the Mountainous Region of Etterick Forest and the Pastoral District of Scotland in general’ (8vo, 1822).
On 1 Aug. 1823, by the death of his father, he succeeded to the peerage, and from 1824 to 1826 he commanded the Diamond frigate on the South American station. In December 1833 he was appointed chief superintendent of trade in China, and took a passage out with Captain Chads in the Andromache. He arrived at Macao on 15 July 1834, and after arranging the establishment, as it was called, went up to Canton, which he reached on the 25th. This measure was contrary to and in defiance of the wishes of the viceroy, Loo, who refused to hold any correspondence with him, as, by established custom, all communications regarding trade passed through the hong merchants. It was Napier's object to break down this custom, and open direct intercourse with the government. Loo, on the other hand, was determined not to admit this, and ordered Napier to return to Macao. Napier refused to go, and was in consequence subjected to many petty annoyances, such as the withdrawal of all domestic servants, while at the same time the trade was stopped. Anxiety, worry, and annoyance, added to the heat and confinement, now made Napier seriously ill, and the surgeon on his staff decided that he must leave Canton.
Napier reached Macao on 26 Sept., and died there on 11 Oct. 1834. He left a family of five daughters and two sons, of whom the eldest, Francis, succeeded as ninth baron.
[Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biog. vii. (Supplement, pt. iii.) 255; Gent. Mag. 1835, i. 267–9, 429; Blackwood's Mag. xiii. 175; Parl. Papers, 1840, vol. xxxvi., including correspondence relating to China, 1840, pp. 1–51; Additional Papers relating to China, 1840, pp. 1–4, and Paper relating to China, 3 April 1840; Foster's Peerage.]
NAPLETON, JOHN (1738?–1817), divine and educational reformer, was the son of the Rev. John Napleton of Pembridge, Herefordshire. He matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, on 22 March 1755, at the age of sixteen, and graduated B.A. 1758, M.A. 1761, B.D. and D.D. 1789. On 13 Dec. 1760 he was elected to a fellowship at his college, and he remained in residence as a tutor until the close of 1777. During this period he endeavoured to raise the standard of education at Oxford, with the result that he was condemned by many of his contemporaries as a ‘martinet’ (Polwhele, Reminiscences, i. 107). He was inducted as vicar of Tarrington, Herefordshire, on 27 Sept. 1777, and as rector of Wold, Northamptonshire, a college living, on 24 Oct. 1777; he resigned his fellowship on 20 Sept. 1778. When Dr. John Butler [q. v.] was translated to the see of Hereford, he called to his aid the services of Napleton, who became the golden prebendary in Hereford Cathedral on 8 May 1789, and the bishop's chaplain. He now endeavoured to effect an exchange of benefices, but his college ultimately refused its consent, and he was compelled to vacate the living of Wold on 28 Nov. 1789. In the diocese of Hereford he was soon rewarded with ample preferment. He was made chancellor of the diocese (1796), master of the hospital at Ledbury, rector of Stoke Edith, vicar of Lugwardine, in the gift of the dean and chapter (1810), and was nominated by Bishop Luxmoore as prælector of divinity at Hereford Cathedral (1810), retaining most of these appointments until his death. He died at Hereford on 9 Dec. 1817, and was buried in a vault in the centre of the cathedral choir. A small white tablet, formerly over his grave, has been removed to the eighth bay of the bishop's cloister. A more elaborate inscription on a similar tablet is over the door, on the south side of the nave, which leads to the same cloister.
Napleton married on 4 Dec. 1793 Elizabeth, the only daughter of Thomas Daniell of Truro, and the sister of Ralph Allen Daniell, M.P. for West Looe, Cornwall. There was no issue of the marriage. Polwhele praised Napleton's conversation: ‘he had anecdote and told a story well.’ He confessed that he was somewhat over-strict in his examination of candidates for ordination. His portrait, painted by T. Leeming, of Corn Market, Oxford, in 1814, was engraved by Charles Picart. Another, apparently by Opie, which cost 70l., was afterwards sold at Bath for 7l.
Napleton wrote many works. While at Oxford he published: 1. ‘Elementa logicæ, subjicitur appendix de usu logicæ et conspectus organi Aristotelis’ (1770), which was not a reproduction of any previous text-book on logic, but his own composition in style and arrangement. 2. ‘Considerations on the Public Exercises for the First and Second Degrees in the University of Oxford’ (1773). Both of these works were anonymous. The second was reprinted at Gloucester in 1805.
