[Naval Chronicle, xxv. 441 (with a portrait); Charnock's Biog. Navalis, v. 380; Beatson's Nav. and Mil. Memoirs; official letters and other documents in the Public Record Office.]
FORREST, EBENEZER (fl. 1774), attorney, resided at George Street, York Buildings, London, and was intimate with Hogarth and John Rich, proprietor of the Lincoln's Inn Theatre. He was the father of Theodosius Forrest [q. v.] His opera entitled ‘Momus turn'd Fabulist, or Vulcan's Wedding,’ was performed at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre on 3 Dec. 1729 and some subsequent nights. He also wrote ‘An Account of what seemed most remarkable in the five days’ peregrination of the five following persons, viz. Messrs. Tothall, Scott, Hogarth, Thornhill, and F. Begun on Saturday, 27 May 1732, and finished on the 31st of the same month,' London, 1782 (illustrated with plates by Hogarth): reprinted with W. Gostling's Hudibrastic version, London, 1872, 4to.
[Gent. Mag. 1824, i. 410, 581-2; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
FORREST or FORRES, HENRY (d. 1533?), Scottish, martyr, is referred to by Knox as ‘of Linlithgow,’ and Foxe describes him as a ‘young man born in Linlithgow.’ David Laing, in his edition of Knox's ‘Works,’ conjectures that he may have been the son of ‘Thomas Forrest of Linlithgow’ mentioned in the treasurer's accounts as receiving various sums for the ‘bigging of the dyke about the paliss of Linlithgow.’ He also states that the name ‘Henricus Forrus’ occurs in the list of students who became bachelors of arts at the university of Glasgow in 1518, but supposes with more likelihood that he was identical with the ‘Henriccus Forrest’ who was a determinant in St. Leonards College, St. Andrews, in 1526, which would account for his special interest in the fate of Patrick Hamilton. Forrest was a friar of the order of Benedictines. Knox states that Forrest suffered martyrdom for no other crime than having in his possession a New Testament in English; but Foxe gives as the chief reason that he had ‘affirmed and said that Mr. Patrick Hamilton died a martyr, and that his articles were true.’ Before being brought to trial Forrest, according to Knox, underwent ‘a long imprisonment in the sea tower of St. Andrews.’ Foxe and Spotiswood both state that the evidence against him was insufficient until a friar, Walter Laing, was sent on purpose to confess him, when he unsuspiciously revealed his sentiments in regard to Patrick Hamilton. According to Foxe he was first degraded before the ‘clergy in a green place,’ described, with apparently a somewhat mistaken knowledge of localities, as ‘being between the castle of St. Andrews and another place called Monimail.’ He was then condemned as a heretic and burned at the north church stile of the abbey church of St. Andrews, ‘to the intent that all the people of Anguishe’ (Angus or Forfar, on the north side of the Firth of Tay) ‘might see the fire, and so might be the more feared from falling into the like doctrine.’ When brought to the place of execution he is said to have exclaimed, 'Fie on falsehood! fie on false friars, revealers of confession!' Calderwood supposes the martyrdom to have occurred in 1529 or the year following, but as Foxe places it within five years after Hamilton's martyrdom, and Knox refers to Forrest's ' long imprisonment,' it in all probability took place in 1532 or 1533.
[Foxe's Acts and Monuments; Calderwood's History of the Church of Scotland, i. 96-7; Knox's Works, ed. Laing, i. 52-3, 516-18; Spotiswood's History of the Church of Scotland, i. 129-30.]
FORREST, JOHN (1474?–1538), martyr. [See Forest.]
FORREST, ROBERT (1789?–1852), sculptor, was born in 1788 or 1789 at Carluke, Lanarkshire. He was an entirely self-taught artist, and was brought up as a stone-mason in the quarries of Clydesdale. His first
public work was the statue of the ‘Wallace
wight’ which occupies a niche in the steeple
of Lanark parish church, and was erected in
1817. He was subsequently employed to
cut the colossal figure of the first Viscount
Melville which surmounts the pillar in the
centre of St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh,
and he was also the sculptor of the statue of
John Knox in the necropolis of Glasgow.
One of his best works is the statue of Mr.
Ferguson of Raith at Haddington; it was
erected in 1843. In 1832 Forrest opened
his public exhibition of statuary on the Calton Hill with four equestrian statues, under
the patronage of the Royal Association of
Contributors to the National Monuments.
In progress of time the gallery was extended
to about thirty groups, all executed by Forrest. He died at Edinburgh, after an illness
of about six weeks' duration, 29 Dec. 1852.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Builder, 1853, p. 32.]
FORREST, THEODOSIUS (1728–1784), author and lawyer, son of Ebenezer Forrest [q. v.], a solicitor, author of ‘Momus turn'd Fabulist,’ and a friend of Rich and Hogarth, was born in London in 1728. He studied drawing under Lambert, one of the first landscape-painters of his time, and until a year or two
