containing thirty-one long folio plates of useful and ornamental examples of penmanship ‘in all the hands.’ There is an elaborately ornamented portrait of the author, by George Bickham, as frontispiece. The work is dedicated to his successful pupil, John Page, esq. It contains one piece of writing by his brother, James Nicholas, who succeeded him at Clapham, and ‘supported’ the school ‘with reputation.’ Besides these three books Abraham Nicholas wrote two copies for George Bickham's ‘Penman's Companion,’ 1722.
[Massey's Origin and Progress of Letters, 1763, pt. ii. pp. 109, 110, 111; Westby Gibson's Bibliography of Shorthand, p. 141; Brit. Mus. Cat., where, however, the three Nicholases are erroneously confused.]
NICHOLAS, DAVID (1705?–1769), Welsh ballad-writer, born about 1705 at Llangynwyd, Glamorganshire, was son of Robert Nicholas and Ann Rees his wife, who, according to the register of Llangynwyd Church, were married 12 Feb. 1699. David was baptised 1 July 1705. In ‘Cambrian Biography’ (p. 82), followed by Taliesin ab Iolo in his ‘History of Glyn Neath’ (p. 29), his birthplace is erroneously stated to be Ystradyfodwg, and the inscription on his tombstone wrongly gives the date of his birth as 1693. He became a schoolmaster, and kept day-schools at Llangynwyd, Ystradyfodwg, and Glyncorrwg successively, but spent the latter years of his life at Aberpergwm, in the Vale of Neath, as the ‘bardd teulu’ or family bard of that house, being probably the last in Wales to hold such a position. He acquired a great local reputation for his surgical skill in the treatment of both man and beast; but he was, like many of the Welsh poets of his day, addicted to drink.
Nicholas was admitted as member of the Glamorgan ‘Gorsedd’ or congress of bards in 1730, and a letter written by him in 1754 to Edward Evans (1716–1798), and printed in Taliesin (ed. by Ab Ithel), i. 94, is considered a masterly exposition of the rules of Welsh prosody. He is said to have translated portions of Homer; but these, if executed, are lost (Tal. ab Iolo, op. cit.) His reputation mainly rests on his ballads, which are among the most popular in Welsh. The best known of them are ‘Y Deryn Pur’ and ‘Fanny Blodau'r Ffair’ (see a translation, ‘Fanny Blooming Fair’ in Dr. Jones's History of Wales, pp. 260–2), which, with others, are preserved in the collection of Welsh national airs by Jane Williams of Aberpergwm. English translations of some of them by Mrs. Pendril Llewelyn of Llangynwyd (1811–1874) have been published in local papers and in ‘Archæologia Cambrensis.’ Nicholas died in 1769 (wrongly given as 1777 in ‘Cambrian Biography’), and was buried at Aberpergwm.
[Cadrawd's History of Llangynwyd, pp. 74, 186–8; Taliesin ab Iolo's Hist. of Glyn Neath (in Welsh), pp. 21, 22, 24, 29; Dr. Jones's Hist. of Wales, p. 260; Cambrian Biography; Miss Williams's Collection of Welsh Airs.]
NICHOLAS, Sir EDWARD (1593–1669), secretary of state to Charles I and Charles II, descended of the Nicholas family of Winterbourne Earls, Wiltshire, was the eldest son of John Nicholas who died at Winterbourne Earls in 1644, and of Susan his wife, a daughter of William Hunton, of East Knoyle (see Pedigree in Hoare, Wiltshire, v. 96). He was born at his father's house on Tuesday, 4 April 1593 (Winterbourne Earls Register; Hoare, ubi supra), and was ‘bred’ there until he was about ten years old, when he was sent with his brother Matthew (see below) to Salisbury grammar school. Two years later they went to school in Sir Lawrence Hyde's house in Salisbury, their father then dwelling in the deanery, and subsequently, when Edward was about fourteen, to Winchester, ‘where we had commons;’ but after a severe illness, six months later, he went home for nine months (1608), and then stayed at the house of his uncle, Richard Hunton, under a schoolmaster called Richard Badcock. On 25 Oct. 1611 he matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford, and in 1612 entered the Middle Temple. After one and a half year's residence at the university he returned to the Middle Temple, studied there till he was ‘above twenty-one,’ and then in 1615 was sent into France, where he remained till midsummer 1616. On his return he was made secretary to Sir John Dacombe, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Dacombe died in 1617, and Nicholas returned to the Middle Temple till November or December 1618, when he became secretary to Edward, lord Zouch, lord warden, chancellor, and admiral of the Cinque ports. In 1622 he resided in the Barbican (Egerton MS. 2523, No. 17), and he represented Winchelsea in the parliaments of 1620–1 and 1623–4 (Return of Members, 1878, lxii. 455, 461).
Nicholas continued with Zouch until the latter resigned his office of lord warden to George, duke of Buckingham, who, upon Lord Zouch's recommendation, made Nicholas his secretary for the business of the Cinque ports (9 Dec. 1624). Buckingham at once bade Nicholas inform himself of the business of the office of lord high admiral of England, and did ‘always make me wait on his grace when the
