third bishop of the diocese. He was also dean of Capetown. In 1880 he excommunicated Dean Williams of Grahamstown on account of views in sympathy with those of Colenso; yet in the same year he highly praised the latter for his championship of the Zulus (Letter to Aborigines' Protection Society).
His death, on 16 Aug. 1882, was the result of a carriage accident. He married in 1836 Miss Potter, and left a large family; three of his sons were in the service of the Cape government at the time of his death.
He was the author of some lectures on Shakespeare (Grahamstown, 1857–8) and of ‘The Kafir, the Hottentot, and the Frontier Farmer,’ London, 1854, and ‘The Bishop's Ride through Independent Kaffraria to Natal and back,’ 1872.
[Cape Argus, 18 Aug. 1882; Crockford's Clerical Directory; Gray's Life of Bishop Gray, passim; Times, 18 Aug. 1882.]
MERRIMAN, SAMUEL, M.D. (1731–1818), physician, born on 29 Dec. 1731 at Marlborough, Wiltshire, was third son of Nathaniel Merriman, grocer there, by his wife Elizabeth Hawkes. Being intended for the medical profession he was sent to Edinburgh in 1748, and graduated there as M.D. in 1753, his thesis ‘De Conceptu,’ 8vo, Edinburgh, 1753, being of so much value that it was reprinted by William Smellie in the second volume of his ‘Thesaurus Medicus’ (1779). Merriman first settled as a physician in Bristol, and afterwards removed to Andover, Hampshire; but coming to London in April 1757, he commenced practice in Queen Street, Mayfair, as an apothecary or general practitioner, in partnership with Oakley Halford, who was about to retire. He remained an apothecary for about twenty years, when he acted on his diploma, and practised only as a physician, finally retiring in 1812. His speciality was midwifery. The number of labours which he attended amounted to rather more than ten thousand; in one year alone he attended 362. His leisure was devoted to literature and biblical studies.
Merriman died at his son-in-law's house, 26 Half Moon Street, on 17 Aug. 1818. In 1753 he married one of the daughters and coheiresses of William Dance, surgeon, of Marlborough, and by her, who died in 1780, he had fourteen children; of these one alone, Ann, wife of his nephew Samuel Merriman [q. v.], survived him.
There is an excellent miniature of him painted by Richmond and engraved by Corner.
[Information from John J. Merriman, esq.; Gent. Mag. 1818, pt. ii. p. 189; Lancet, 30 Nov. 1850, p. 610.]
MERRIMAN, SAMUEL, M.D. (1771–1852), physician, born on 25 Oct. 1771 at Marlborough, Wiltshire, was son of Benjamin (1722–1781), who was eldest son of Nathaniel Merriman of the same place. Samuel's great-grandfather, another Nathaniel, was youngest son of John Merriman (1618–1670), a captain in the army of Cromwell (Waylen, Hist. of Marlborough; Rushworth, Hist. Coll. vii. 1351; Grove, Antiquities of Carisbrook Castle, 1 Dec. 1648; Whitelocke, Memorials). His mother, who was his father's second wife, was Mary, eldest daughter of William Hawkes of Marlborough, and niece to Sir Michael Foster [q. v.] the judge. The father Benjamin had a large brewery in Marlborough. He was a man of scientific pursuits, and the author of political and other essays, some of which were inserted in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine.’ He likewise received medals from the Society of Arts and the Bath Agricultural Society for inventing various machines. Samuel was sent to Marlborough free school, of which in 1783 he was head-boy. In 1784 he arrived in London, and studied medicine under his uncle, Dr. Samuel Merriman [q. v.] After hearing the lectures of Baillie and Cruikshank at the Anatomical Theatre in Great Windmill Street he attended in 1795 the midwifery lectures of Dr. Thynne and the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, but his clinical knowledge of disease was principally obtained by seeing the numerous patients of his cousin William (1766–1800), son of the elder Samuel Merriman [q. v.] In 1807, having become a member of the Society of Apothecaries, he entered into partnership with Mr. Peregrine, to whom he soon resigned the general practice, limiting himself to midwifery alone. In 1808 he was appointed physician-accoucheur to the Westminster General Dispensary, having previously received the honorary degree of M.D. from Marischal College, Aberdeen, for which he was specially examined in London by Dr. Vaughan (afterwards Sir Henry Halford) [q. v.] He resigned the office in 1815, and was appointed consulting physician-accoucheur and subsequently vice-president of the charity. On 17 Aug. 1809 he was elected to the like office at the Middlesex Hospital, where in 1810 he commenced his annual course of lectures on midwifery, and continued them regularly till 1825. In 1822, when his consultation practice as a physician for the diseases of women and children had largely increased, he removed to Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, and he subsequently purchased an estate at Rodborne Cheney, Wiltshire. Merriman resigned his post at the Middlesex Hospital on 7 March
