Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/38

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Paterson
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Paterson

Paterson married, first, Elizabeth Turner, widow of Thomas Bridge, minister of the gospel in Boston, New England (she died before his return to England); secondly, Hannah Kemp, widow of Samuel South, by whom he had one son. His second wife and child died in Darien. By his will, signed at Westminster on 1 July 1718, and certified on 3 July at the Ship Tavern, Without Temple Bar, he left legacies to his step-children, the children of his sister Janet Mounsey, and to his sister Elizabeth, who married John Paterson the younger of Kinharvey. The legacies to his Scottish relatives were never paid, as the ‘just debts’ he was forced to contract in connection with his various schemes absorbed all his estate.

Paterson published anonymously:

  1. ‘Conferences on the Public Debts. By the Wednesday's Club in Friday Street,’ London, 1695, 4to.
  2. ‘A Letter to a Member of the late Parliament, concerning the Debts of the Nation,’ London, 1701.
  3. ‘Proposals and Reasons for constituting a Council of Trade,’ Edinburgh, 1701, 12mo.
  4. ‘England's great Concern, in the perpetual settlement of a Commission of Accounts. … With a discovery of some notable frauds committed in collecting the supplies,’ London, 1702, 4to.
  5. ‘The Occasion of Scotland's Decay in Trade, with a proper expedient for recovery thereof, and the increasing our Wealth,’ 1705.
  6. ‘An Essay, concerning Inland and Foreign, Publick and Private Trade; together with some overtures how a company or national trade may be constituted in Scotland, with the advantages which will result therefrom,’ 1705. The last two pamphlets were written in reply to ‘Two Overtures humbly offered to … John, Duke of Argyle [by John Law].’
  7. ‘An Enquiry into the Reasonableness and Consequences of an Union with Scotland. … By Lewis Medway. With observations thereupon, as communicated to Lawrence Phillips, Esq., near York,’ London, 1706, 8vo.
  8. ‘An Enquiry into the State of the Union of Great Britain and the Past and Present State of the Trade and Public Revenues thereof,’ London, 1717, 8vo. Written, it is said, at Walpole's request.

Bannister also printed and published Paterson's memorial to William III (1 Jan. 1701), and his proposal for settling on the isthmus of Darien, releasing the natives from the tyranny of Spain, and throwing open the trade of South America to all nations, 1701 (Addit. MS. 12437, Brit. Mus.), with the title, ‘Central America,’ London, 8vo, 1857; reprinted, with some of Paterson's other works, in Bannister's ‘Life and Writings of Paterson,’ 1859.

The only known portrait of Paterson is the pen-and-ink wash-drawing in the British Museum (ib. 10403, f. i b), executed in 1708, the date of the transcription of ‘Two Treatises relating to the Union … by William Paterson, Esq.,’ to which it is prefixed.

[Notes kindly supplied by Archibald Constable, esq.; authorities quoted, and Bannister's Life and Writings of Paterson; Carstares' State Papers, pp. 584, 635, 645, 655; Burnet's History of his own Time; Clerk of Penicuik's Memoirs (Scottish Hist. Soc.), xviii. 61; Darien Papers (Bannatyne Club); Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. v. p. 304; Boyer's Political State, 1711, p. 470; Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. ii. pt. iii. pp. 89–123; Laing's History of Scotland, iv. 249 sqq.; Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland; Scott's Tales of a Grandfather (ed. Cadell, 1846), chap. lix.; Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, iii. 121, 124, 131; Chambers's Biogr. Dict. ed. Thomson, iii. 231–7; Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, ii. 657 sqq.; Macaulay's Hist. of England, 1862, 8vo, vii. 123, viii. 196 sqq.; Pagan's Birthplace and Parentage of William Paterson; Burton's Scot Abroad, ii. 278 sqq.; McDowall's Hist. of Dumfries, pp. 532–6; McKerlie's Lands and their Owners in Galloway, iii. 72, 280; McCulloch's Literature of Political Economy, p. 159; Lawson's History of Banking, pp. 67, 396–9; Francis's Hist. of the Bank of England, i. 44, 60, 71; Martin's Stories of Banks and Bankers, pp. 12–19; Rogers's First Nine Years of the Bank of England, pp. 2, 22, 148. Paterson is the hero of Eliot Warburton's novel Darien, or the Merchant Prince, an historical romance, London, 1852; and to Paterson is dedicated Paul Coq's treatise La Monnaie de Banque ou l'espèce et le portefeuille, Paris, 1863, to which is prefixed a memoir, in which full justice is done to Paterson's supreme business talents.]

W. A. S. H.

PATERSON, WILLIAM (1755–1810), traveller and lieutenant-governor of New South Wales, was born on 17 Aug. 1755. He entered the army at an early age, but not before he had developed a strong liking for natural history, especially botany. The interest and patronage of Lady Strathmore enabled him to gratify these tastes, and before entering upon active service he had made a series of exploring expeditions in the Hottentot country. He left England early in 1777, arrived at Capetown in May, and on 16 Oct., in company with Captain Gordon, made his first expedition, returning to Cape Town on 13 Jan. 1778. His second expedition lasted from May to 20 Nov. 1778. His third was into the district which he called Caffraria, and claimed as hitherto unknown, and it lasted from 23 Dec. 1778 to 23 March 1779. His fourth journey occupied him from 18 June to 21 Dec. the same year. He made several fresh contributions to science, and is