Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/34

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Ummarcote
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Underdown

in Memorials of Henry V, p. 38). He was one of the commissioners who concluded the seven years' truce of Durham. In 1429 he founded a chantry at Farnacres in Durham (Surtees, Durham, iv. 243). His last appointment was on a commission, dated 5 Feb. 1435, to negotiate a truce with the Scots (Fœdera, x. 629). He died on 29 Jan. 1436, and was buried at Newminster. Hardyng, who served him till his death as constable of Kyme Castle, has left a touching picture of his brave, simple, and honourable character (pp. ix–xi). He celebrates his valour, ‘sapience,’ his gentleness that would not even reprove his servants before others, and his justice that made many of his Scots enemies go to Berwick to submit their disputes to his arbitration. When made knight of the Garter he was but a poor man, whose estate was worth only a hundred marks a year. He was the last male representative of the Umfravilles that held Redesdale under the entail of 1378. The estates thus settled now passed away from his nieces to the Talboys—Sir Walter Talboys (d. 1444), the grandson of Sir Walter Talboys (d. 1418), who was the son of Eleanor Borrodon and Henry Talboys. Their son was Sir William Talboys (d. 1464) [q. v.], who was, with strange persistence, still styled Earl of Kyme.

[Hardyng's Chronicle, ed. Ellis; Gesta Henrici V (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Memorials of Henry V (Rolls Ser.); Walsingham (Rolls Ser.); Rymer's Fœdera, vols. viii. and ix.; Nicolas's Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council; Monstrelet, ed. Douet d'Arcq; J. Le Févre, Seigneur de Saint-Remy (the last two in Soc. de l'Histoire de France); Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 508; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, i. 95, iv. 425; Doyle's Official Baronage, ii. 303–4; Ramsay's Lancaster and York, vol. i.; Wylie's Hist. of Henry IV; Sir H. Nicolas's Battle of Agincourt; Puiseux's Siège de Rouen par les Anglais; Surtees's Durham; Hodgson's Northumberland, I. ii. 48–55 for Robert, 55–60 for Gilbert.]

T. F. T.


UMMARCOTE, Robert (d. 1241), cardinal. [See Somercote.]

UMPHELBY, FANNY (1788–1852), author of ‘The Child's Guide to Knowledge,’ was born in Knowles's Court in the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, Doctors' Commons, in 1788. She lived for many years at Leatherhead, and died at Bow on 9 April 1852. In 1825 Miss Umphelby published ‘The Child's Guide to Knowledge, … by a Lady.’ The work became at once a standard book; a second edition appeared in 1828, and it is now (1899) in its fifty-eighth edition. Miss Umphelby also wrote and published ‘A Guide to Jewish History.’ ‘“The Child's Guide to Knowledge,” which came to teachers and pupils of the present century as a warmly welcomed novelty, was in truth on the plan of the ‘Elucidarium’ attributed to Lanfranc [q. v.], but differed from it in form, in so far as the information is extracted from the pupil, not from the teacher. … None of the new productions could rival in success “The Child's Guide to Knowledge.” The old idea of the “colloquy,” and the old plan of a book on the properties of things, were here revived and welcomed in the schoolroom’ (Field, The Child and his Book). The authorship of ‘The Child's Guide’ has been frequently attributed to Miss Umphelby's sister, wife of Robert Ward; but Miss Umphelby composed all of it. To later editions about eighty pages were added by her nephew, Mr. Robert A. Ward of Maidenhead, to keep the information up to date.

[Private information.]

R. A. W.


UNDERDOWN, THOMAS (fl. 1566–1587), poet and translator, was the son of Stephen Underdown, to whom Sir Thomas Sackville, afterwards first earl of Dorset [q. v.] had shown kindness (epistle prefixed to 2 below). Wood says that he spent some time at Oxford University, but left it without a degree. Cooper identifies him with Thomas Underdown of Clare Hall, Cambridge, B.A. 1564, M.A. 1568, and points out that a Thomas Underdown was ‘parson of St. Mary's in Lewes’ in 1583, when he was in trouble for nonconformity. It is not probable that this was the translator.

The earliest extant edition of Underdown's chief work, ‘An Æthiopian Historie, written in Greeke by Heliodorus, no lesse wittie than pleasaunt,’ is undated; a copy is in the Bodleian. It doubtless appeared in 1569, when Francis Coldock was licensed to publish ‘The ende of the xth book of Helioderus Œthiopium (sic) Historye.’ Another edition, ‘newly corrected and augmented with divers and sundry newe additions by the said Authour,’ appeared in London in 1587, 4to. The address ‘to the gentle reader’ of the 1587 edition says that the earlier issue was published by persuasion of ‘my friend’ Francis Coldock, which now ‘by riper years better advised’ the writer regrets. A third edition appeared in 1606. In 1622 William Barrett, finding Underdown's style ‘almost obsoleted,’ revised and republished his translation ‘cleared from the barbarisms of anti-