another vision—twelve years since his last seizure—he hastened to build the monastery Cnoberesburg or Burghcastle, in Suffolk, on land granted by the king. Then, committing it to the charge of Goban and Dichull, he went away to his brother Ultan, with whom he lived as a hermit for a year.
Owing to the disturbed state of the country he had to go to France and take refuge with Clovis, king of Neustria. The king being a child, the government was in the hands of Erchinoald, mayor of the palace, who gave him land at Latiniacum, now Lagny, on the Marne, six leagues from Paris. Here he erected a monastery in 644. According to the account in the ‘Codex Salmanticensis,’ it was when travelling with Clovis and Erchinoald that his last illness came on. He died on 16 Jan. probably in 650, at Macerias, now Mazeroeles. He was buried at Peronne, in the church built by Erchinoald, and with this place his name has since been associated. He was reputed to have performed miracles in his lifetime, and even his pastoral staff, if sent to a sick person, was supposed to have a healing power. The brethren whom he took with him formed the nucleus of an Irish monastery, and the succession appears to have been kept up by emissaries from Ireland, as we read in the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’ at 774, that ‘Moenan, son of Cormac, abbot of Cathair Fursa (the city of Fursa, i.e. Peronne) in France, died.’ Fursa's visions were placed on record soon after his death in ‘the little book’ to which Bæda refers, and which Mabillon considers to be the life published by Surius at 16 Jan. Bæda describes the agitation of a monk who, when describing what he heard from Fursa's lips, though it was the severest season of the year, and he was thinly clad, broke out into a profuse perspiration from mere terror.
[Codex Salmanticensis, p. 77 (London, 1888); Bedæ Eccl. Hist. lib. iii. cap. 19; Lanigan's Eccl. Hist. ii. 448–64; Annals of the Four Masters, A.D. 774; Calendar of Œngus, p. xxxv; Dr. Todd's St. Patrick, p. 406.]
FURSDON, JOHN, in religion Cuthbert (d. 1638), Benedictine monk, the eldest son of Philip Fursdon of Fursdon in the parish of Cadbury, Devonshire, was born at Thorverton in that county. He became an enthusiastic disciple of Father Augustine Baker [see Baker, David], his father's chaplain, and proceeded to the Benedictine convent of St. Gregory at Douay, where, after completing the year of probation, he took the solemn vows as a professed father of the order, 25 Nov. 1620 (Weldon, Chronicle, Append. p. 8). Returning to the English mission, he laboured chiefly in the southern counties, and he appears to have often resided in the families of Viscount Montagu and Lady Elizabeth Falkland. He was an instrument in the conversion of Lady Falkland's four daughters, and of Hugh Paulinus, or Serenus, Cressy [q. v.] Fursdon, who frequently passed under the assumed name of Breton, died in Lady Falkland's house in London on 2 Feb. 1637–8.
His works are:
- ‘The Life of the … Lady Magdalen, Viscountesse Montague, written in Latin … by Richard Smith [bishop of Chalcedon], and now translated into English by C. F.,’ 1627, 4to, dedicated to Antony Maria, viscount Montague.
- ‘The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict,’ 1638, 12mo, with plates.
- ‘The Rule of St. Bennet, by C. F.,’ Douay, 1638, 4to, dedicated to ‘Mrs. Anne Carie, daughter of the Lord Viscount Faulkland.’ A new edition by ‘one of the Benedictine Fathers of St. Michael's, near Hereford [i.e. Francis Cuthbert Doyle], was published at London, 1875, 8vo.
[Oliver's Catholic Religion in Cornwall, pp. 9 n., 310–11; Snow's Necrology, p. 44; Weldon's Chronicle, pp. 178, 210; Sweeney's Life of Augustine Baker, p. 40; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Fullerton's Life of Lady Falkland, p. 148 seq.]
FUSELI, HENRY (Johann Heinrich Fuessli) (1741–1825), painter and author, born at Zurich in Switzerland, 7 Feb. 1741, was the second son of Johann Caspar Fuessli, painter and lexicographer, and Elisabetha Waser, his wife. The family of Fuessli, still, as for many generations, resident in Zurich, has produced many members distinguished in art, literature, and science. Melchior Fuessli, an ancestor, had distinguished himself for original work. Johann Caspar Fuessli, a pupil of Kupetzky, the portrait-painter, was himself a well-known painter of portraits and landscapes, patronised by the petty royalty of the neighbouring states, and the author of the ‘Lives of the Helvetic Painters.’ His brothers, Heinrich and Johann Rudolf, were also artists, and the latter was the compiler of the ‘Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon;’ each had a son named Heinrich, whose works should be carefully distinguished from those of John Henry Fuseli. Of Johann Caspar's numerous family five survived, including Heinrich; the eldest, Johann Rudolf, became an artist, entered the imperial service at Vienna, and possessed the family taste for lexicography; the youngest, Johann Caspar, was most noted for his achievements in entomology, another science to which the family was addicted; the daughters, Anna
