VENTRIS, Sir PEYTON (1645–1691), judge, eldest surviving son of Edward Ventris, barrister-at-law, of Gray's Inn and Granhams, Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire (a scion of a Bedfordshire family of some antiquity), by Mary, daughter of John Breuse of Wenham Hall, Suffolk, was born at Wenham Hall in November 1645. He was admitted on 3 Feb. 1653–4 a member of the Middle Temple, where he was called to the bar on 2 June 1661. Failing to secure a practice, he devoted himself to reporting (see infra). In 1681 he was one of three commissioners for executing the office of high steward of Ipswich, for which borough he was returned to the Convention parliament on 12 Jan. 1688–9. He vacated the seat the same year, on being raised to the bench of the common pleas (4 May), having previously (2 May) been sworn serjeant-at-law. On 1 Oct. following he was knighted at Whitehall. As assessor to the House of Lords in the Preston peerage case (11 Nov. 1689), he advised against the validity of the English patent on the ground that it had been made out after the ‘abdication’ of James II [see Graham, Richard, Viscount Preston]. He was also consulted by the peers during the progress of the corporations restoration bill, the regency bill, and other important legislative measures. He died on 6 April 1691, leaving issue by his wife Margaret, daughter of Henry Whiting of Coggeshall, Essex. Edward Ventris, an antiquary, was a lineal descendant of the judge, and the possessor of his portrait by Riley.
Ventris's ‘Reports’ appeared posthumously in two parts: 1. ‘Cases in the King's Bench, 20–36 Car. II.’ 2. ‘Cases in the Common Pleas, 21 Car. II–3 Will. and Mary’ (each part with an appendix of miscellaneous cases), London, 1696, fol. Later editions appeared in 1701, 1716, and 1728. They have a high reputation for accuracy.
[Nichols's Herald and Genealogist, iv. 387; Lysons's Magna Britannia, II. i. 249; Foster's Gray's Inn Adm. Reg.; Le Neve's Pedigrees of Knights; Wodderspoon's Memorials of Ipswich, p. 122; Wynne's Serjeant-at-Law; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs, i. 529, ii. 205; Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. vii. 335, 432, 13th Rep. App. v. 72, 135, 138, 148, 176; Foss's Lives of the Judges; Wallace's Reporters.]
VERBRUGGEN, Mrs. SUSANNA (1667?–1703), actress, born about 1667, was the daughter of Percival or Percivall, an actor, who in 1673 played at Dorset Garden Fortinbras in ‘Hamlet,’ and was seen in other characters of secondary importance. ‘Percivall the player’ is last heard of during 1693. On 17 Oct. in that year he was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for clipping coin, and he was reprieved in the cart at Tyburn seven days later (cf. Luttrell, Brief Hist. Relation, iii. 183, 205, 212). His daughter Susanna is first heard of in 1681, when at the Theatre Royal, as Mrs. Percival, she was the original Winifred, described as a young Welsh Jilt, in D'Urfey's ‘Sir Barnaby Whig, or No Wit like a Woman's.’ In 1684, after the junction of the companies, she played at Dorset Garden two parts, Susan and Mrs. Jenkin, in Ravenscroft's ‘Dame Dobson, or the Cunning Woman,’ and, at the Theatre Royal, Phillis in Otway's ‘Atheist, or the second part of the Soldier's Fortune,’ Juliana in Southerne's ‘Disappointment, or the Mother in Fashion,’ and Constance Holdup in Brome's ‘Northern Lass.’ In the following year she was Prudentia in Beaumont and Fletcher's ‘Duke and no Duke,’ to her father's Mago; and (at Dorset Garden) Girtred to his Alderman Touchstone in Tate's ‘Cuckolds Haven, or an Alderman no Conjuror.’ At the Theatre Royal she was Julietta in D'Urfey's ‘Commonwealth of Women,’ an alteration of Fletcher's ‘Sea Voyage,’ and Matilda in ‘Rollo, Duke of Normandy.’ In 1686 she was the original Nell in Jevon's ‘Devil of a Wife,’ and Lucia in D'Urfey's ‘Banditti.’ On 2 July a license was issued for the marriage of William Mountfort [q. v.] of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, bachelor, aged 22, and Mrs. Susanna Peircevall, spinster, of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, aged 19, by consent of parents, at St. Giles-in-the-Fields (see Chester, Marriage Licences, under Mountfort). As ‘Mrs. Mountfort, late Mrs. Percival,’ she was in 1687 the original Diana in Mrs. Behn's ‘Lucky Chance, or an Alderman's Bargain.’ She was also the first Panura in the ‘Island Princess,’ altered by Tate from Fletcher, and Bellemante in Mrs. Behn's ‘Emperor of the Moon.’ In 1688 she ‘created’ Isabella in Shadwell's ‘Squire of Alsatia,’ and in 1689 Mrs. Gertrude in Shadwell's ‘Bury Fair,’ and Maria in Carlile's ‘Fortune Hunters.’
In 1690 she is already spoken of as one of those at the head of Betterton's company (Cibber), and this same year saw her as the first Feliciana in Mountfort's ‘Successful Strangers,’ Morayma in Dryden's ‘Don Sebastian,’ and Phædra in Dryden's ‘Amphitryon, or the two Sosias;’ 1691 as Florella in Mountfort's ‘Greenwich Park,’ and Sir Anthony Love in Southerne's ‘Sir Anthony Love, or the Rambling Lady;’ and 1692 as Mrs. Witwoud in Southerne's ‘Wives Excuse,’ Eugenia in Shadwell's ‘Volunteers,’
