Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/315

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Churchill
307
Churchill

attended as the official historiographer of the expedition. He died in the winter of 1870, at the age of forty-five.

[Athenæum, 17 Dec. 1870, p. 805.]

G. G.

CHURCHILL, ARABELLA (1648–1730) mistress of James II, was the eldest daughter of Sir Winston Churchill [q. v.] of Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, the father of John, first duke of Marlborough [q. v.] Her mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Brake of Ashe, Devonshire. She was born in March 1648, rather more than two years before her brother John. After the Restoration Sir Winston Churchill's loyalty to the house of Stuart marked his family out for royal favour, and Arabella, soon after the Duke of York's marriage to Anne Hyde, was appointed maid of honour to the duchess, while her brother John was page to the duke. In this situation between 1665 and 1668 she won the affections of James. If we may believe the malicious report of the Count de Grammont, she was far from handsome. He describes her as 'a tall creature, pale-faced, nothing but skin and bone,' and as an 'ugly skeleton' but says that the duke was so charmed by the graces displayed by her during an accident in the hunting-field, that he sought and obtained her for ms mistress. Arabella became the mother by the Duke of York of (1) Henrietta (1670–1730), who in 1684 named Sir Henry Waldegrave of Chewton, ancestor of the present earl of Waldegrave; (2) James Fitzjames (1671–1734), afterwards the famous Duke or Berwick; (3) Henry Fitzjames (1673–1702) who was created Duke of Albemarle by his mother after the revolution of 1688, and had also the title of grand prior of France; (4) another daughter who became a nun. When Arabella's connection with James II came to an end, she had a pension on the Irish establishment and married Colonel Charles Godfrey, who became, by the influence of the Duke of Marlborough, clerk controller of the green cloth and master of the jewel office in the reigns of William III and Anne, in which capacity Swift made acquaintance with him at Windsor (see Journal to Stella, 20 Sept 1711, &c.) By him she had two daughters, Charlotte, a maid of honour to Queen Anne, who married the first Viscount Falmouth, and Elizabeth, who married Edmund Dunch. Surviving to the age of eighty-two (1730) she lived to see her royal lover die an exile at the court of the French monarch against whom her famous brother was commanding, while her no less famous son, the Duke of Berwick, was serving the same monarch in Spain. A portrait by Lely belongs to Earl Spencer.

[Coxe's Life of the Duke of Marlborough, p. 34; Memoir of the Count de Grammont, Eng. ed.; 1846, pp. 274–82; Pepys's Diary, 12 Jan. 1669; Biographia Britannica.]

E. S. S.

CHURCHILL, AWNSHAM (d. 1728), bookseller, was connected with the family of the Churchills of Colliton, Dorsetshire, and was the son of William Churchill of Dorchester. He was apprenticed to George Sawbridge, and he and his brother John entered into business as booksellers and stationers at the sign of the Black Swan in Paternoster Row. They 'were of an universal trade,' says Dunton. 'I traded very considerably with them for several years; and must do them the justice to say that I was never concerned with any persons more exact in their accompts and more just in their payments' (Life, i. 204). They published in 1695 the edition of Camden's 'Britannia' by Bishop Gibson, who used a manuscript (now lost) of John Aubrey, which he called 'Monumenta Britannica,' lent to him by Churchill, and which was preserved by the Churchill family down to the commencement of the present century. A second edition of Gibson's Camden was issued by Awnsham alone in 1722. Their next most important publication was the well-known work with which their name is usually associated: 'A Collection of Voyages and Travels, some now first printed from original MSS., others translated out of foreign languages and now first published in English; in four volumes, with an original preface giving an account of the progress of navigation,' &c., 1704, 4 vols, folio. It was issued to subscribers in that year, and the publishers stated that they possessed materials for two more volumes. These came out in 1732, 'printed by assignment from Messrs. Churchill.' The first four volumes were reissued (new title-pages only) in 1732; a 'third edition' of the six volumes is dated 1744–6; and another by Thomas Osborne, 1752. 'A Collection from the Library of the Earl of Oxford,' London, T. Osborne, 1745 and 1747, 2 vols, folio, known as the 'Harleian Collection,' and a similar collection by John Harris (1744–8, 2 vols, folio), are usually added to Churchill's collection, making up a valuable set of reprints of voyages and travels. It is stated on the title-page of the third edition that the preliminary essay on the history of navigation is 'supposed to be written by the celebrated Mr. Locke,' and it is included in the works of the philosopher (1812). The authorship is doubtful, but Locke had much to do with getting together the materials of the collection, which is likely to have been produced at his instigation. Locke was upon friendly terms with