1762, fol.; a pirated edition, Dublin, 1767, 8vo; the second edition, corrected, with additional notes and references by his nephew, Michael Dodson, esq., of the Middle Temple, London, 1776, 8vo; the third edition, with an appendix, containing new cases, with additional notes and references by his nephew, Michael Dodson, esq., barrister-at-law, London, 1792, 8vo.
[Dodson's Life of Sir Michael Foster, 1811; Foss's Judges of England, 1864, viii. 285–7; Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xiv. 508–10; The Georgian Era, 1833, ii. 535; Townsend's Catalogue of Knights, 1833, p. 28; Barrett's Bristol, p. 116; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; British Museum Catalogue.]
FOSTER, PETER LE NEVE (1809–1879), secretary to the Society of Arts, born 17 Aug. 1809, was the son of Peter le Neve Foster of Lenwade, Norfolk. He was educated under Dr. Valpy at Norwich grammar school, whence he went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating in the mathematical tripos in 1830. He was elected to a fellowship at his college as thirty-eighth wrangler. In 1836 he was called to the bar, and for fifteen or sixteen years he practised as a conveyancer. In 1853 an association of some years with the Society of Arts led to his being appointed secretary to the society on the retirement of George Grove, and this post he held till his death. In association with Sir Henry Cole [q. v.], Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke [q. v.], and others, he had much to do with the organisation of the first Great Exhibition of 1851 and its successor in 1862, though his share of the work was not recognised by any of the honours or rewards which fell to the lot of many of his companions. He was also connected in various capacities with several of the earlier foreign exhibitions. He was one of the first to practise, as a scientific amateur, the art of photography, and was one of the founders of the Photographic Society. He served for thirteen years as secretary of the mechanical science section of the British Association, and was for a still longer time a regular attendant at its meetings. He was a constant contributor to several of the scientific and technical journals. In the journal of his own society he wrote a good deal, generally anonymously. He read two papers before the Society of Arts, one on ‘Aluminium’ (in 1859), and the other on the ‘Electric Loom’ (in 1860). As secretary to the Society of Arts, he took part in many public movements originated by the society, but being a man of simple tastes, and singularly devoid of personal ambition, he was never anxious to obtain recognition for his labours or to dispute with others the credit which was often justly his due. He died at Wandsworth, Surrey, 21 Feb. 1879.
[Personal knowledge; fuller notices (by the present writer) will be found in Journ. Soc. Arts, 1879, xxvii. 316; and Nature, xix. 385. Also see Athenæum, 1879, i. 282; Engineering, xxix. 178; Engineer, xlvii. 160, &c.]
FOSTER, Sir ROBERT (1589–1663), lord chief justice, youngest son of Sir Thomas Foster, a judge of the common pleas in the time of James I, was born in 1589, admitted a member of the Inner Temple 1604, and called to the bar in January 1610. He was reader in the autumn of 1631, and with ten others received the degree of serjeant on 30 May 1636. On 27 Jan. 1640 he succeeded Sir George Vernon as a justice of the common pleas and was knighted. He was an ardent royalist, is supposed to have defended ship-money and billeting of troops, and joined the king at Oxford on his retreat thither, but he was one of those judges for whose continuance in office the House of Commons petitioned in 1643 (Clarendon, Rebellion, ed. 1826, iii. 407). At Oxford he attempted without success to hold a court of common pleas. On 31 Jan. 1643 he received the degree of D.C.L. He was one of the judges who tried and condemned Captain Turpin in 1644, and although the House of Commons ordered Serjeant Glanville, his colleague in that case, to be impeached for high treason, Foster was only removed, and with the four other judges of the common pleas disabled from his office ‘as if dead,’ for adherence to the king. He compounded for his estates by paying a large fine. After the king's death he lived in retirement, and, being a deep black-letter lawyer, practised in the Temple as a chamber counsel and conveyancer. He had received on 14 Oct. 1656 a license from the Protector and council to come to London on private business and stay there, notwithstanding the late proclamation. At the Restoration he was at once restored to the bench, 31 May 1660, and, having shown zeal on the trials of the regicides, was presently (21 Oct. 1660) appointed to the chief-justiceship of the king's bench, which had remained vacant for want of a suitable person to fill it. He dealt sternly with political prisoners. Many Fifth-monarchy men and the quakers, Crook, Grey, Bolton, and Tonge, accused of a plot against the king's life, were tried by him, and in the case of Sir Harry Vane he not only browbeat the prisoner on the trial, but induced the newly-restored king to sanction the execution against his word and the petition of both houses of parliament. On 1 July 1663 he tried Sir Charles Sedley
