Ebrington, Beau Brummell, Henry Luttrell and ‘his inseparable fat Nugent,’ Viscount Ponsonby, Richard Meyler, Lord Frederick Bentinck, Lord Byron, and Henry Brougham (who instigated the writer, as she informs us, to undertake her campaign against the ‘paltry conduct of his grace of Beaufort’). Actions were brought by Mr. Blore, a stonemason of Piccadilly, who was awarded 300l. damages, and by Hugh Evans Fisher, who received heavier damages in the court of common pleas on 21 May 1826 (Times, 22 May). Further instalments of the ‘Memoirs’ were threatened, but their appearance was averted. Harriette's former aristocratic admirers appear to have made her up a purse, upon the strength of which she buried her past and married a M. Rochefort or Rochfort. It is doubtful whether she had any share in ‘Paris Lions and London Tigers’ (London, 1825, 8vo, with coloured plates, several editions), a farcical narrative, describing the visit of an English family to Paris. Nothing further is known of Harriette's career. Among the sisters who emulated her triumphs, and are frequently alluded to by name in the ‘Memoirs,’ may be mentioned Fanny, who lived for many years as Mrs. Parker, but whose last hours (described by Harriette with an appearance of feeling) were soothed by the kindness of Lord Hertford (Thackeray's ‘Marquis of Steyne’); Amy, who having relinquished the protection of Count Palmella and 200l. a month, ‘paid in advance,’ ‘married’ the disreputable musician, Robert Nicolas Charles Bochsa; and Sophia, who married as a minor, on 8 Feb. 1812, at St. Marylebone, Thomas Noel Hill, second baron Berwick, and died at Leamington, aged 81, on 29 Aug. 1875 (Illustr. London News, 11 Sept. 1875). An engraving of Harriette is in the British Museum print-room (no name or date).
[Memoirs of Harriette Wilson in British Mus. Library; this is the so-called second edition, complete in four volumes, with an appendix. Other sets were issued by Stockdale in eight volumes, considerably expanded by the nominal editor, ‘Thomas Little,’ and in 1831, as by the same editor, was issued an ‘Index, Analytical, Referential, and Explanatory, of Persons and Matter,’ which is very scarce. It is doubtful whether any sets were issued by Stockdale subsequent to the ‘thirty-third’ edition of 1825, for the protection of copyright was not extended to the volumes, which were pirated by T. Douglas and probably by others. Some of the sets were issued with plates, both plain and coloured, and some have as frontispieces portraits of the four sisters, ‘Harriette,’ ‘Fanny,’ ‘Amy,’ and ‘Sophy,’ with autographs. Stockdale sought to continue the blackmailing campaign in a weekly periodical called Stockdale's Budget, December 1826–June 1827, which contains several letters attributed to Harriette Rochfort. See also Biographie des Contemporains, Paris, 1834, vol. v. (Suppl.) p. 904; Amorous Adventures and Intrigues of Tom Johnson, 1870, vol. ii. chap. i.; Catena Librorum Tacendorum, 1885; A Commentary on the Licentious Liberty of the Press, London, 1825, 8vo; Times, 2 July 1825, 22 May 1826; British Lion, 3 April 1825; Blackwood's Mag. November 1829, p. 739; Sheil's Irish Bar, 1854, i. 348; [Gay's] Bibliographie des Ouvrages relatifs à l'amour, Nice, 1872, v. 51.]
WILSON, HARRY BRISTOW (1774–1853), divine and antiquary, born on 23 Aug. 1774, was a son of William Wilson of the parish of St. Gregory, London. He left Merchant Taylors' school in 1792, and was admitted commoner of Lincoln College, Oxford, on 12 Feb. 1793. Elected scholar on the Trappes foundation in the following year (30 June), he graduated B.A. on 10 Oct. 1796, and M.A. on 23 May 1799. He proceeded B.D. on 21 June 1810, and D.D. on 14 Jan. 1818. In February 1798 he became third master at Merchant Taylors', and from 1805 to 1824 was second master. He became curate and lecturer of St. Michael's Bassishaw, and lecturer of St. Matthias and St. John the Baptist, London, in 1807, and in 1814 received in addition the Townsend lecturership at St. Michael's, Crooked Lane. On 2 Aug. 1816 he was collated by Archbishop Manners-Sutton to the united parishes of St. Mary Aldermary and St. Thomas the Apostle. There he was continually involved in litigation with his parishioners. But in spite of these differences he established a parochial lending library, and abolished fees for baptism.
Wilson was a learned adherent of the evangelical school, with more of the scholar than the divine. His chief theological works were a pamphlet against the catholic claims (‘An Earnest Address respecting the Catholics,’ 1807, 8vo), and a volume of sermons issued the same year. But he published some valuable antiquarian books. The chief of these was his ‘History of Merchant Taylors' School,’ issued in two quarto parts in 1812 and 1814 respectively. He received a subsidy from the company of 100l. towards the expenses of publication. The work is scholarly, if somewhat diffuse.
In 1831 Wilson published another quarto on ‘the History of the Parish of St. Laurence Pountney, including four documents unpublished, an account of Corpus Christi or Pountney College,’ within which Merchant Taylors' school was established in 1561. The work remained unfinished on account of the
