Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/368

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Ouseley
362
Ouseley

the Guelphs. He died at Hall Barn Park, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on 18 Nov. 1844, aged 74. A monument was erected to his memory in Hertingfordbury Church, Hertfordshire, by his widow.

Ouseley was an able oriental scholar, and possessed a valuable collection of oriental manuscripts which he had made in India and Persia. While at Shiraz he gave protection and assistance to Henry Martyn, the well-known missionary, who was engaged in revising and completing a Persian translation of the New Testament. He assisted in founding the Royal Asiatic Society of London in 1823, and subsequently in establishing ‘the Oriental Translation Committee,’ of which he was elected chairman. In 1842 he was appointed president of the Society for the Publication of Oriental Texts, instituted in that year. He was also a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Antiquarian Society. He purchased Hall Barn, in August 1832, from Harry Edmond Waller of Farmington Lodge, Gloucestershire, a descendant of Edmund Waller the poet, and in 1835 served as high sheriff of Buckinghamshire.

Ouseley married, on 12 April 1806, Harriet Georgina, daughter of John Whitelocke, by whom he had two sons—viz. Wellesley Abbas, born at Tabriz in Persia on 4 Aug. 1813, who died on 9 March 1824; and Frederick Arthur Gore [q.v.] , who succeeded to the baronetcy—and three daughters, viz. Mary Jane, born on 28 March 1807 who died in 1861; Eliza Shírín, born on 13 June 1811 at Shiraz in Persia, who died an infant; and Alexandrina Perceval, born at St. Petersburg on 24 Oct. 1814, who died at Frome Selwood, Somersetshire, on 1 Dec. 1862.

‘The Gûlistân of Musle-Huddeen Shaik Sâdy of Sheeraz, printed from the Calcutta edition published by Francis Gladwin, Esq.’ (London, 1809, 8vo), was printed under his direction. Ouseley's only printed work, viz. ‘Biographical Notices of Persian Poets, with Critical and Explanatory Remarks,’ London, 1846, 8vo, was published by the ‘Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland’ after his death. Copies of the official correspondence of the prince regent, Ouseley, Morier, and Ellis with Fath Ali Shah and some of his ministers are preserved at the British Museum (Addit. MS. 19529). There are engraved portraits of Ouseley by H. Cook after R. Rothwell, and by Ridley after S. Drummond, in Jerdan's ‘National Portrait Gallery,’ vol. iv., and the ‘European Magazine’ for July 1810 respectively.

[Memoir of the late Right Hon. Sir Gore Ouseley, by the Rev. James Reynolds, prefixed to Ouseley's Biogr. Notices of Persian Poets, 1846; Morier's Second Journey through Persia, &c., 1818; Sir William Ouseley's Travels in Various Countries of the East, more particularly Persia, 1819–23; Markham's General Sketch of the History of Persia, 1874, pp. 375, 378–80, 534–6; Webb's Comp. of Irish Biogr. 1878, p. 427; Jerdan's National Portrait Gallery, 1833, vol. iv.; Gent. Mag. 1814 pt. ii. p. 552, 1845 pt. i. pp. 200–201, 665, 1863 pt. i. p. 131; Annual Register, 1844, App. to Chron. p. 283; Cussans's Hertfordshire, ‘Hundred of Hertford,’ pp. 106, 112; Lipscombe's Hist. of Buckinghamshire, 1847, vol. i. p. xx, vol. iii. 181, 188–9; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

G. F. R. B.


OUSELEY (Sir), RALPH (1772–1842), major-general in the Portuguese service, born in 1772, was second son of John Ouseley of Kiltecacley, co. Galway. Gideon Ouseley [q. v.] was his elder brother. He was appointed a lieutenant in the Leicester fencible infantry 25 Nov. 1794. The regiment was one of many regiments of home-service regulars (not militia) raised at the time under the name of 'fencibles.' He served with the corps in Ireland in 1798, and was in command of a detachment at the defeat of Lake's troops at Castlebar, and the subsequent surrender of the French at Ballinamuck. An account of his gallantry and humanity at the former action is given by an eye-witness in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' (1800, pt. ii. p. 811). Ouseley was appointed to the 38th foot in March 1801. He commanded the grenadier company of that regiment during Emmet's insurrection in Dublin in 1803 [see Emmet, Robert], and was often detached in charge of the powder mills near Rathcool. In 1804 he exchanged to the 70th to go to India, but was appointed to a company in the royal African corps in March 1805, removed to the 82nd in August, and was transferred to the staff of the army depot, Isle of Wight, in March 1807. In September 1809 he exchanged to the 63rd, and entered the Portuguese service, under Marshal Beresford [see Beresrord, William Carr], as major l8th infantry, with which he served the campaigns of 1810-12. He became lieutenant-colonel of the 18th Portuguese after the capture of Badajos, and commanded it in the Pyrenees in 1818, where he distinguished himself in action against a superior force near Pampeluna on 30 July 1813. He was then transferred to the 8th Portuguese, and commanded that regiment in a night attack on the height in front of Urda, when with five hundred men of his regiment he drove off three thousand French (Philippart, Roy. Mil. Calendar, vol. iv.) Napier merely states that the