JAMES or JAMESIUS, WILLIAM (1635?–1663), scholar, son of Henry James, and grandson of a citizen of Bristol, was born about 1635 in Monmouthshire. He was first educated privately by his uncle, William Sutton, at Blandford Forum, Dorsetshire, ‘and being extraordinary rath-ripe, and of a prodigious memory, was entred into his accedence at five years of age’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. iii. 634). In 1646 he was elected a king's scholar at Westminster School, and ‘making marvellous proficiency under Mr. Busby, his most loving master’ (ib. p. 634), he was elected a student of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1650 (M.A. 1656). Before he took his degree Busby appointed him an assistant in the school. He contributed, with his schoolfellow, Dryden, English verses to John Hoddesdon's ‘Sion and Parnassus,’ 1650, small 8vo, and some Greek verses by him are prefixed to the ‘Horæ Subsecivæ’ of H. Stubbs, 1651, small 8vo. In 1651 he produced ‘Εἰσαγωγή in linguam Chaldaicam in usum scholæ Regiæ Westmon.,’ dedicated to ‘his tutor, parent, and patron,’ Busby; was made usher at Westminster in 1658, and helped to prepare ‘The English Introduction to the Latin Tongue, for the use of the Lower Forms in Westminster School,’ 1659. In 1661 he became second master (J. Welch, Alumni Westmonasterienses, new edit. 1852, p. 135). He died on 3 July 1663, aged about 28, ‘to the great reluctancy of all who knew his admirable parts,’ and was buried at the west end of Westminster Abbey, ‘near the lowest door, going into the cloister’ (Wood, Athenæ, iii. 634; J. Dart, History of Westminster Abbey, ii. 142).
James was one of Busby's favourite scholars. In the old library at Westminster School there are preserved among the Busby relics two neatly written manuscript Latin translations by James of Bacon's ‘Reginæ Elisabethæ fœlicitas,’ 1652, and the ‘Heros Laurentii,’ 1654, of Balthazar Gracian. The last is dedicated to Busby by his ‘filius et pupillus.’ In the same collection are also Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek vocabularies prepared by James.
[Authorities mentioned above, esp. Welch's Alumni Westmonasterienses.]
JAMES, WILLIAM (fl. 1760–1771), landscape-painter, practised in London, residing for some years in Maiden Lane, and later in May's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane. He exhibited with the Incorporated Society of Artists from 1761 to 1768, and at the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1771. He was an imitator of Canaletto, and painted views of London, chiefly on the river and in St. James's Park, but his works have only an antiquarian interest. They are hard and mechanical in execution, the ruler being largely used in the lines of the buildings, and the water conventionally treated. In 1768 James sent to the Society of Artists, and in the two following years to the Royal Academy, some views of Egyptian temples, but as he was never out of England these are presumed to have been copies. The date of his death is not recorded. Seven of his pictures are at Hampton Court.
[Edwards's Anecdotes of Painting; Redgrave's Century of Painters; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1880; Law's Catalogue of Pictures at Hampton Court.]
JAMES, Sir WILLIAM (1721–1783), commodore of the Bombay marine, is said to have been the son of a miller, to have been born in 1721 at Bolton Hill Mill, near Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, and to have run away to sea to avoid punishment for poaching (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. xii. 244). Another story is that he was the son of an agricultural labourer. That he did go to sea is certain, and probably enough to the West Indies; but the story that there, in 1738, he entered on board a king's ship under the command of Captain (afterwards Lord) Hawke is either inaccurate or untrue. Hawke was on half-pay at the time, did not join the Portland till July 1739, and did not reach the West Indies till early in 1740; the only William James whose name appears on the Portland's books joined her on 17 July, and ran from her on 21 Oct. 1739, before she left England. The same doubt must remain on the story that he obtained command of a ship in the Virginia trade; that she was captured by the Spaniards and carried into Havana; that after some term of imprisonment James and his companions were released, and embarked on board a brig bound to South Carolina, which foundered in a hurricane; that James, with the master and six of the crew, escaping in a small boat, was, after twenty days of excessive hardship, thrown again on the coast of Cuba; and that some time after he found means to return to England, where he married the landlady of the Red Cow at Wapping.
