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Adams
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Adams

appeared in 1796. 2. ‘Observations on the Cancerous Breast,’ 1801. 3. ‘A Guide to the Island of Madeira,’ 1801. 4. ‘Answer to Objections against the Cow-pox.’ 5. ‘A Popular View of Vaccine Inoculation,’ 1807. 6. ‘An Inquiry into the Laws of different Epidemic Diseases,’ 1809. 7. ‘A Philosophical Dissertation on Hereditary Peculiarities of the Human Constitution,’ 1814. 8. ‘Memoirs of the Life and Doctrines of the late John Hunter, Esq.,’ 1816. Also a few pamphlets, and many contributions to the ‘London Medical and Physical Journal’ (cf. xii. 141, 193, 332, 552).

[Munk's College of Physicians, iii. 76; London Medical and Physical Journal, xxii. 87, xl. 85.]

ADAMS, RICHARD (1619–1661), collector of verse, the second son of Sir Thomas Adams, alderman of London, was born on 6 Jan. 1619–20; admitted fellow-commoner of Catherine Hall, Cambridge, 28 April 1635; died 13 June 1661. Among the Harleian MSS. is a thin quarto (No. 3889) lettered on the outside ‘R. Adams. Poems.’ One or two short pieces of inferior merit are signed ‘R. Adams,’ or ‘R. A.,’ but most of the poems in the collection are accessible in print. Like so many of the manuscript collections of the seventeenth century, Harl. MS. 3889 is no doubt a medley of verses by various hands. Adams certainly cannot be the author of the delightful song, ‘Pan, leave piping, the gods have done feasting’ (sometimes called ‘The Green Gown,’ or ‘The Fetching Home of the May’), for the words of that song were composed, according to the best authority, not later than 1635 (vide Westminster Drollery, ed. Ebsworth, p. 54, Appendix). The capital verses on ‘Oliver Routing the Rump, 1653,’ beginning ‘Will you heare a strange thing never heard of before?’ were first printed in the ‘Merry Drollery,’ 1661, p. 53; they reappeared in ‘Wit and Drollery,’ 1661, p. 260; and in ‘Merry Drollery Compleat,’ 1670, and again in ‘Loyal Songs,’ 1731; oddly enough, they are not in the ‘Rump Collection.’ This song is unsigned in Adams's commonplace book; and judging from the signed verses it is far better than anything he could have written.

[Information from Mr. Ebsworth; Harl. MS. 3889; Cooper's New Biographical Dictionary.]

A. H. B.

ADAMS, RICHARD (1626?–1698), ejected minister, was the sixth in lineal succession of a family of ministers; his father was incumbent of Wirrall, Cheshire; his grandfather was rector of Woodchurch, Cheshire. He studied first at Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. on 26 March 1644; entered at Brasenose, Oxford, on 24 March 1646, aged about twenty, and graduated B.A. in 1648 and M.A. in 1651. He became fellow of Brasenose, but resigned in 1655, on being admitted to the rectory of St. Mildred's, Bread Street. From this he retired in 1662 as a nonconformist, and became pastor of a small congregation in Southwark. His ecclesiastical views were presbyterian; he was a practical preacher, a devout and quiet man. He died on 7 Feb. 1698, leaving a widow. He was the editor of the expositions of Philippians and Colossians in Matthew Poole's ‘Annotations upon the Holy Bible,’ 1683–5, a work based on the same author's ‘Synopsis Criticorum,’ 1669–76. He published a ‘Funeral Sermon’ for Henry Hurst, 1690; other sermons of his are in the ‘Morning Exercises at Cripplegate,’ 1660–90, reprinted 1844–5.

[Funeral Sermon by Dr. John Howe, 1698; Coles' MS. Athenæ Cantab. Brit. Mus.; Wood's Athenæ Oxon.; Calamy's Account; Walker's Sufferings.]

A. G.

ADAMS, ROBERT (d. 1595), architect, was author of a large plan of Middleburgh, dated 1588, and a pen-and-ink drawing intended to demonstrate the complete defensibility of London, called ‘Thamesis Descriptio.’ With the same object he ‘drew and engraved,’ according to Walpole, ‘representations of the several actions while the Spanish Armada was on the British coasts.’ It seems, however, that Ryther engraved them. Adams was ‘surveyor of the queen's buildings’ and a ‘man of abilities.’ An inscription to his memory is in the north aisle of Greenwich Church.

[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting; Redgrave's Dict. of English Artists.]

E. R.

ADAMS, ROBERT (1791–1875), surgeon, was born about 1791 in Ireland, but of his early life nothing is known. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, and became B.A. in 1814, proceeded M.A. in 1832, but not M.D. till 1842. He began the study of medicine by apprenticeship to Dr. William Hartigan, became licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland in 1815, and was elected fellow in 1818. After spending some time on the Continent to perfect his medical and surgical knowledge, he returned to Dublin to practise, and was elected surgeon successively to the Jervis Street Hospital and the Richmond Hospital. He took part in founding the Richmond (afterwards called the Carmichael) School of Medicine, and lectured