Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/214

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dotes of Bowyer’ as ‘a mixture of benevolence and madness’ (p. 609). Her numerous writings largely consist of single printed sheets, issued chiefly between 1685 and 1715. She describes herself in the latter year as having ‘spoken’ for over forty years. She constituted herself the counsellor of the reigning sovereigns from Charles II to George I. In her ‘Apology’ (1694) she states that she went to Windsor and back on foot in one day, apparently for the purpose of telling Charles II of his faults. In her ‘Reasons humbly presented to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal’ (1715) is an amusing account of her interview with James II. In 1710 she published a prayer for Queen Anne, the parliament, and kingdom. With George I she adopted a severer tone, and charged him with threatening to destroy London by fire, and with going to church to talk to his daughter and play with dogs and puppies (Good Counsel to King George). A religious enthusiast, she was an intolerant champion of the church of England and the Test Act equally against the Roman catholics and dissenters. She is mentioned by Dryden only to be dismissed with a smile (Preface to The Hind and the Panther), but her ‘Vindication of the Church of England,’ 1687, brought forth a satirical ‘Address of Thanks to Mrs. James on behalf of the Church of England for her worthy Vindication of that Church,’ to which she replied with ‘Mrs. James's Defence.’ She also met with a female antagonist; see ‘Elizabeth Rone's Short Answer to Eleanor James's Long Preamble or Vindication of the new Test’ (Dryden, Works, ed. Scott, 1821, x. 116). Her ‘Advice to all Printers in general’ has been several times reprinted. The city authorities were not so indulgent to her as the court, and on 11 Dec. 1689 she was committed to Newgate ‘for dispersing scandalous and reflective papers’ (Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 617). The date of her death is not known. Imperfect lists of her publications will be found in the British Museum Catalogue and in that of the Guildhall Library.

[Authorities above quoted; Timperley's Encyclopædia of Literary and Typographical Anecdote, pp. 597–8; Reading's History of Sion College, 1724, p. 37.]

C. W-h.


JAMES, FRANCIS (1581–1621), Latin poet, born in 1581, was a native of Newport, Isle of Wight, and near kinsman of Thomas James (1573?–1629) [q. v.] He was a queen's scholar at Westminster School, and was elected in 1598 to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, graduating B.A. in 1602, M.A. 1605, B.D. 1612, and D.D. in 1614 (Oxf. Univ. Reg. ii. i. 210, ii. 231, iii. 235). He distinguished himself as a writer of Latin verse. A Latin poem by him appears in the university collection issued on James I's visit to Christ Church in 1605, and he published in 1612 ‘Threnodia Henricianarum Exequiarum, sive Panolethria Anglicana et Apotheosis Henrici Ducis Glocestrensis,’ &c. He was appointed preacher or reader at the Savoy Chapel, London, and in 1616 was made by King James rector of St. Matthew's, Friday Street. Wood states that he died in 1621, and was buried at Ewhurst, Surrey.

[Wood's Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 359; Welch's Alumni Westmonast. p. 67; W. Hazlitt's Collections and Notes, 1867–76, p. 234; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 475.]

R. B.


JAMES, FRANK LINSLY (1851–1890), African explorer, was the eldest son of Daniel James (1800–1876), by his second wife, Mary, daughter of Thomas Hitchcock of New York. His father was a wealthy Liverpool metal merchant, who had in 1828 migrated from Albany, U.S.A. He was born at Liverpool on 21 April 1851, and in consequence of an accident in his early youth was educated at home, with the result that he acquired strong literary and artistic tastes. He entered at Caius College, Cambridge, in 1870, and afterwards proceeded to Downing, where he graduated B.A. in 1877 and M.A. in 1881. A taste for travel was first fostered in James by the delicate health of his younger brother, William, which necessitated his wintering in warm climates, and he made his first extended tour in the winter of 1877–8, when he penetrated the Soudan as far as Berber, going by the Nile and Korosko desert, and returning across the desert to Dongola. In the following winter he visited India, and was allowed by Sir Samuel Browne to join the troops under the latter's command and march up the Khyber Pass to Jellalabad. The next two winters he devoted to the successful exploration of the Basé country in the Soudan, the results of which are embodied in his ‘Wild Tribes of the Soudan,’ 1883, 8vo (2nd edit. 1884, prefaced by a chapter on the ‘Political Aspect of the Soudan’ by Sir Samuel Baker). Although largely a chronicle of merely sporting adventures, the book supplies much new geographical information respecting the Soudan. In the course of the journey James and his party made the ascent of the Tchad-Amba, a high and precipitous mountain occupied by an Abyssinian monastery, and never previously ascended by Europeans (Wild Tribes, p. 202). In the winter of 1882–3 James visited Mexico, and on 8 Dec.