under the connivance of the government, who gave him very little disturbance, being fully satisfied with the inoffensiveness of his behaviour (Church Hist. iii. 469). It is certain, however, that he was exposed to constant danger. He tells Cardinal Sacripanti in 1706 that for sixteen years he had scarcely found anywhere a place to rest in with safety. For above a year he found a refuge in the house of the Venetian ambassador. Afterwards he again lived in continual fear and alarm. In 1714 he wrote that between 4 May and 7 Oct. he had had to change his lodgings fourteen times, and had but once slept in his own lodging. He added: ‘I may say with the apostle, in carceribus abundantius. In one I lay on the floor a considerable time, in Newgate almost two years, afterwards in Hertford gaol, and now daily expect a fourth prison to end my life in’ (Catholic Miscellany, 1827, vii. 170).
In 1720 he applied to the holy see for a coadjutor. Henry Howard, brother to the Duke of Norfolk, was accordingly created bishop of Utica, in partibus, and nominated to the coadjutorship, cum jure successionis, on 2 Oct. 1720, but he died before the end of the year, and in March 1720–1 the propaganda appointed Benjamin Petre coadjutor in his stead. Giffard died at Hammersmith on 12 March 1733–4, in his ninety-second year, and was buried in the old churchyard of St. Pancras. The tomb has disappeared, but the inscription upon it is printed in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 3rd ser. xii. 191 (cf. Addit. MS. 27488, f. 130). Giffard bequeathed his heart to Douay College, and it was buried in the chapel, where a monument with an epitaph in Latin was erected to his memory (Brady, Episcopal Succession, iii. 161).
Dodd highly commends Giffard for his charity to the poor, and Granger says he was much esteemed by men of different religions. He procured many large benefactions for the advancement of the catholic religion and the benefit of the clergy, and at his death left about 3,000l. for the same ends (Gillow, Dict. of the English Catholics, ii. 456).
Two of his sermons preached at court were published separately in 1687, and are reprinted in ‘Catholic Sermons,’ 2 vols. Lond. 1741 and 1772. Many interesting letters written by him are printed in the ‘Catholic Miscellany’ for 1826 and 1827. There is a fine picture of him at Chillington, a life size, half length. His portrait has been engraved by Claude du Bosc, from a painting by H. Hysing.
[Bloxam's Magdalen Coll. and King James II, pp. 214, 242, 243, 244, 245, 250, 253 n., 265, 270, 271; Bloxam's Magdalen Coll. Reg. i. 121 n., ii. pp. clii, cliii, clv, iii. 184, 196; Brady's Episcopal Succession, iii. 147, 149–61, 203, 206, 245, 283, 289; Cansick's Epitaphs at St. Pancras, i. 29; Catholic Mag. (1833), iii. 103; Catholic Miscell. (1826) v. 131, 310, vi. 12, 83, 158, 227, 320, 378, (1827) vii. 30, 169, 322; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 425, 469, 486; Gillow's Bibl. Dict. ii. 451, 454; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 5th edit. vi. 107; Laity's Direct. for 1805 (portrait); Lingard's Hist. of England (1849), x. 296; Luttrell's Hist. Relation of State Affairs, i. 68, 430, 435, 445, ii. 65, 73, v. 469; Noble's Contin. of Granger, iii. 171; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vii. 242, 3rd ser. i. 263, xi. 455, 509, xii. 76, 189, 190, 512, 4th ser. i. 64; Palmer's Life of Cardinal Howard, p. 203; Panzani's Memoirs, pp. 338, 361, 365, 373, 378, 387; Smith's Brewood; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 598; Wood's Fasti, ii. 402.]
GIFFARD, Sir GEORGE MARKHAM (1813–1870), lord justice of appeal, fourth son of Admiral John Giffard, and Susannah, daughter of Sir John Carter, was born at his father's official residence, Portsmouth dockyard, 4 Nov. 1813. He was educated at Winchester College and at New College, Oxford, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1832 and took the degree of B.C.L. on 4 March 1841, entered at the Inner Temple, of which he eventually became a bencher, and was called to the bar in November 1840. He rapidly obtained an excellent equity practice, and was for many years a leading chancery junior counsel. In 1859 he became a queen's counsel, and attached himself to the court of Vice-chancellor Sir William Page Wood, and, in spite of a severe illness which kept him from his work for many months after he received silk, he soon obtained a leading position in that court. When Vice-chancellor Wood in March 1868 became a lord justice of appeal, Giffard succeeded him, and was again his successor on his promotion from the court of appeal to the woolsack in December, when he also became a member of the privy council. After an illness of some length he died at his house, 4 Prince's Gardens, Hyde Park, London, on 13 July 1870. He was both quick and learned, indifferent to rhetorical display, terse in argument, and a refined and cultivated scholar. He was a decided liberal in politics, but never contested any constituency. In 1853 he married Maria, second daughter of Charles Pilgrim of Kingsfield, Southampton.
[Solicitors' Journal, 16 July 1870; Law Times, 16 July 1870. For descriptions of him by the Lord-chancellor and Lord-justice James, see Times, 16 and 20 July 1870; Cat. Oxf. Graduates; Kirby's Winchester Scholars.]
