bourhood of Nice . . . and in 1788 yet other twelve views (mediocre enough) in the neighbourhood of Chamonny and the lake of Geneva, drawn and etched by himself. The value of these is due to the beautiful colouring added by Bernard Lory the elder. Soon after he betook himself and his landscape factory (Prospektfabrik) to London, and there associated himself with a certain Thomas Gowland as his partner, and Cornelius Apostool as engraver. In the last ten years of the eighteenth century this firm turned out a new series of views in Switzerland, France, and Savoy, which are about on a level with their precusors, but had not the advantage of Bernard Lory's tasteful brush. It must be acknowledged, however, that the clean firm lines of Apostool's needle add as much to this series as the other lost from the flaccid and insecure draughtsmanship of Beaumont. A description of these plates and their prices (high at times) is found in Meusel's Museum.' He afterwards took to landscape painting, exhibiting in 1806 'A Storm at Sea,' in which the waves are said to have been drawn with great truth. A list of his works is in the new edition of Nagler, 1881, and a rather long account of him in the old, 1835.
[Füssli's Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon, 1806; Meusel's Museum, xiv. 36-38; Meusel's Neue Miscel. 476, 477; Nagler's Künstler-Lexicon, 1835 and 1881.]
BEAUMONT, BASIL (1669–1703), rear-admiral, was the fifth son, amongst the
twenty-one children, of Sir Henry Beaumont,
of Stoughton Grange and Cole Orton, a distant cousin of the Duke of Buckingham
(Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, and
Gardiner's Hist. of England, ii 317). Of his
early service in the navy there is no record:
it was short and uneventful, and on 28 Oct.
1688 he was appointed lieutenant of the
Portsmouth. Six months later, 21 April
1689, he was appointed captain of the Centurion, which ship was lost in Plymouth
Sound in a violent storm on 25 Dec. of the
same year. Although so young a captain,
no blame attached to him. He was accordingly appointed, after some months, to the
Dreadnought, and early in 1692 was transferred to the Rupert, in which ship he took
part in the battle of Barfleur. He continued
in the Rupert during the following year;
and in 1694 commanded the Canterbury in
the Mediterranean. In 1696 he commanded
the Mountagu, in the fleet cruising in the
Channel and off Ushant, and was for a short
time detached as commodore of an inshore
squadron. He was afterwards transferred,
at short intervals, to the Neptune, Essex,
and Duke, whilst in command of the squadron off Dunkirk, during the remainder of 1696
and till the peace. In November 1698 he
was appointed to the Resolution, and during
the next year was senior officer at Spithead,
with a special commission for commanding
in chief and holding courts-martial (23 Feb.
1698-9). In the end of August he was ordered to pay the ship off. He commissioned
her again some months later, and continued
in her for the next two years, for a great
part of which time he lay in the Downs,
commanding — as he wrote — 'a number of
ships of consequence, with no small trouble
and a good deal of charge,' on which he referred it to the lord high admiral, 'if this
does not require more than barely commanding as the eldest captain' (9 April 1702).
His application did not meet with immediate
success; in June he was turned over to the
Tilbury, and continued to command the
squadron in the Downs, at the Nore, and
in the North Sea, till, on 1 March 1702-3,
he was promoted to be a rear-admiral, and
directed to hoist his flag on board the Mary,
then fitting out at Woolwich. His rank,
not his service, was altered. During the
summer he cruised in the North Sea and off
Dunkirk, or convoyed the Baltic trade; on
the approach of winter he returned to the
Downs, where he anchored on 19 Oct. He
was still there on 27 Nov., when the great
storm which 'o'er pale Britannia passed,'
hurled the ship on to the Goodwin Sands.
Every soul on board, the admiral included,
was lost. The circumstances of his death
have given to Admiral Beaumont's name a
wider repute than his career as an officer
would have otherwise entitled it to; his service throughout was creditable, without
being distinguished; and the only remarkable point about it is that, after having held
important commands, he attained flag-rank
within fifteen years of his entry into the
service, and when he was not yet thirty-four
years of age. Two younger brothers, who
had also entered the navy, had previously
died; one, William Villiers, a lieutenant,
had died of fever in the West Indies, 17 July
1697; the other, Charles, was lost in the
blowing up of the Carlisle, 19 Sept. 1700;
and their mother, Lady Beaumont, after the
death of the rear-admiral, memorialised the
queen, praying for relief. As Lady Beaumont's second son, George, who, on the death
of his elder brother, had succeeded to the title
and estates, was unmarried and appointed a
lord commissioner of the admiralty in 1714,
the implied statement that the family was
dependent on Basil is curious. The petition,
however, was successful, and a pension of
