Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/119

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Charles
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Charles


Allieri. The intrigue between them was as much the efect of Charles's ill-conduct as it was the immediate cause of the final quarrel between him and his wife. The countess fled to Rome in 1780, and was very kindly treated by her brother-in-law the cardinal, who actual in the matter with marked good sense and good feeling. A separation was arranged, and the countess continued to live only with Allieri till his death. Neglected and in solitude, Charles now thought of the daughter that had been born to him by Miss Walkenshaw in the days of his wanderings. He heard that she was living with her mother in the convent at Meaux, and he wrote asking her to come and live with him. She acceded to his request, and became a great favourite in Florentine society. Charles created her Duchess of Albany, and until his death regarded her with the greatest affection. He lived now chiefly at Florence, but returned to Rome a few months before his death, 31 Jan. 1788. His brother became the pensioner of George III, who with a graceful generosity placed in 1819 a monument by Canova over the tomb of James III and his two sons in St. Peter’s. The Jacobite cause, except as a sentimental reminiscence, had long since been buried by Charles himself.

[Sir Horace Mann's Letters among the State Papers of Tuscany in the Record Oillce; Decline of the last Stuarts by Earl Stanhope. Roxburghe Club; Letters of John Walton among the State Papers Italian states in the Record Ollica; State Papers, Dom. 1746-6; MS. Journal by Lord Elcho, in possession of Mrs. Erskine Wemyss; the Lockhart Papers; Stuart Papers; Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather; Von Reumont’s Die Gräfin von Albany; Life of Prince Charles by A. C. Evmld.]

A. C. E.

CHARLES, DAVID (1762–1834), of Carmarthen, Welsh preacher and writer, a younger brother of the celebrated Thomas Charles of Bala [q. v.], was born at Llanfihangel-Abercowin. He was apprenticed to a flax-dresser and rope-maker at Carmarthen, afterwards spent three years at Bristol, and finally married and settled down at Carmarthen. Long connected with the Calvinistic methodists, he began to preach at the age of forty-six, and was one of the first lay-preachers ordained ministers in South Wales in 1811. He soon won an exceptional reputation as a preacher, both in Welsh and English. He travelled all over South Wales, and was especially distinguished by his extending the influence of the methodists to the English-speaking districts He was possessed of sufficient means from trade, and received nothing for his preaching. Paralysed in 1828, he died on 2 Sept. 1834, and was buried at Llangunnor. His eloquent ‘Sermons’ were published at Chester in 1840, and were translated in 1840. They have been several times reprinted.

[Memoir by H. Hughes, prefixed to English edition of Charles’s Sermons.]

T. F. T.

CHARLES, JOSEPH (1716–1780), author of ‘The Dispersion of the Men of Babel,’ and the principal cause of it enquired into' (1755, 2nd edition 1769), was born at Swaffham, Norfolk; the register of his baptism is 6 Nov. 1716. If he studied at any English university, he took no degree; he must not be confounded with his father, Joseph Charles, who graduated at Oxford 1710. He was presented in 1740 to the vicarage of Wighton, which he retained till his death on 4 July 1786. He was buried at Swaffham, of which his father had been vicar. The ‘Dispersion’ is his only known book. The argument is based on a literal acceptance of the narrative in Genesis, supplemented by harmonising interpretations of prophecy and concurring testimonies of profane writers. It is written in a style prolix even for the time, but characterised by much naïveté. To Japhet was given the possession of all Europe and America, and the sentence against Ham -‘servant of servants’-is now in full force. ‘Are we not trading constantly to Guinea for them? . . . How many millions of negroes have been transported from their own country since Japhet got possession of America?’ The city afterwards called Babel ‘must needs have been built in the district of Ham.’ Nimrod was the head of the undertaking, which, being contrary to the divine purpose, was defeated by a miraculous gift of languages. ‘These men therefore must have had their new languages, as the first man had his, by divine inspiration, and Moses tells us that this was the case . . . so that this miracle is one grand and living demonstration of the truth of Moses' history.’

[Blomefeld's Norfolk, ix. 209; Swaffham parish registers. and information from vicars of Swafham and Wighton.]

J. M. S.

CHARLES or CARLES, NICHOLAS (d. 1613), herald, is stated by Noble to have been son of a London butcher named George Carles, and grandson of Richard Carles of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. William Careless or Carlos [q. v.] is believed to have belonged to the same family. The herald’s name is spelt in a variety of ways, but Charles is the commonest form. At an early age Charles appears to have entered the College of Arms as Blanch-Lion pur-