listened to socialists and sceptics. He was attracted by the pre-Raphaelites, and his picture, ‘The Little Stranger,’ exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1855, was sold for 100l. After revisiting Scotland he was advised to go abroad for his health, and passed the winter of 1855–6 at Malaga. Some of his Spanish pictures were exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1856, and some of them were bought by John Phillips, R.A. After despatching his painting Gibson visited the Alhambra in March 1856, and made many sketches. Creswick had bought one of Gibson's pictures before the opening of the Academy for 150l. Gibson returned to England in June, but unfortunately lingered there too long. He broke a blood-vessel in September, and died 5 Oct. 1856. In the following May his ‘Gipsies of Seville’ was exhibited in the Academy. He had bequeathed to Dr. Tweedie his picture of the Alhambra Towers with the Sierra Nevada in the distance, ‘A Pleasing Prospect,’ and it was chromolithographed and published.
[Personal remembrance; Royal Academy Exhibition Catalogues, 1855–7; Art Journal, 1855, p. 172, 1856–68; Struggles of a Young Artist, being a Memoir of David C. Gibson (anon., by William Macduff), 1858, valuable only for portrait, extracts from his journals of travel, and his poems, among which are ‘Angelo and Zelica,’ written at Malaga, in imitation of J. G. Lockhart; Dumfries Herald, Greenock Advertiser, and Macphail's Ecclesiastical Journal.]
GIBSON, EDMUND (1669–1748), bishop of London, son of Edmund Gibson of Knipe by his wife Jane Langharne, and nephew and heir of Thomas Gibson, M.D. [q. v.], was baptised at Bampton, Westmoreland, 19 Dec. 1669, and educated at the free grammar school there. In 1686 he was admitted as a ‘poor serving child’ at Queen's College, Oxford, and proceeded B.A. 25 June 1691. As early as 1691 he appeared in print, as the editor of a macaronic poem by William Drummond (1585–1649) [q. v.], entitled ‘Polemo-Middinia,’ with ‘Christ's Kirk on the Green’ by James I of Scotland, and an original dissertation on macaronic poetry. Gibson's energies were now attracted towards Anglo-Saxon studies, then somewhat the rage at Oxford, through the reputation and teaching of Dr. Hickes [q. v.] In 1692 he published an edition of the ‘Saxon Chronicle,’ with a Latin translation and notes, a preface, and a chronological index. In the same year Gibson published an account of the manuscripts in the library made by Tenison when rector of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and in the collection of Sir W. Dugdale bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford (cf. Hearne, Coll. ed. Doble, ii. 45–6). This served to bring him to the notice of Tenison, lately (1691) made bishop of Lincoln, and led to his future promotion. An edition of Quinctilian was published in 1693 by Gibson, who, according to Hearne, ‘took little pains in it,’ and in the same year he supplied notes to an edition by James Brome [q. v.] of Somner's ‘Roman Ports and Forts in Kent,’ and in 1694 issued his own Latin translation of Somner's ‘Julii Cæsaris Portus Iccius.’ Gibson proceeded M.A. 21 Feb. 1694, was admitted a fellow of his college, and took holy orders. In 1695 he published an English translation of Camden's ‘Britannia,’ with the aid of William Lloyd, of Jesus College, who revised the whole work. Dr. John Smith furnished the additions on the bishopric of Durham in the second edition; the observations on Oxfordshire were by Bishop Kennett; large collections made from Dodsworth's papers were communicated by Dr. Nat. Johnston (2nd edition, 2 vols. fol. 1722; 3rd edition, 1753, and again 1772). Gibson's edition of Sir Henry Spelman's English works, published in the author's lifetime, together with his posthumous works, both in Latin and English, appeared, with a life of the author, under the title of ‘Reliquiæ Spelmannianæ,’ 1698. Gibson had now been made domestic chaplain to Archbishop Tenison and librarian at Lambeth. Through the same patronage he became lecturer of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, rector of Stisted (1700), and rector of Lambeth (1703). Being thus closely connected with the archbishop, Gibson was necessarily involved in the acrimonious controversy as to the rights and powers of convocation which raged at that period and produced a vast crop of pamphlets. On the meeting of the convocation of Canterbury, at the beginning of 1701, Atterbury endeavoured to substantiate his views that the relations between the upper and lower houses of convocation were similar to those existing between the houses of lords and commons; that the lower house had a right to prorogue itself and arrange for its own sittings, and was not subject to the archbishop. This view was strongly combated by Gibson and others. Gibson's first pamphlet, published 1700, was entitled ‘A short state of some present questions in Convocation.’ Soon afterwards (1701) he published ‘The right of the Archbishop of Canterbury to prorogue the whole Convocation,’ and the next year two other pamphlets on the same subject. These led to a more important work, which forms now the text-book for all proceedings in convocation. It is entitled ‘Synodus Anglicana; or the Constitution and Proceedings of an English Convocation,
