parts played during the summer seasons at the Haymarket: Hebe Wintertop in O'Keeffe's ‘Dead Alive,’ 16 June 1781; Mefrow Van Boterham in Andrews's ‘Baron Kinkvervankotsdorsprakingatchdern,’ 9 July; Mrs. Cheshire in O'Keeffe's ‘Agreeable Surprise,’ 3 Sept.; Lady Rounceval in O'Keeffe's ‘Young Quaker,’ 26 July 1783; Lady Pedigree in Stuart's ‘Gretna Green,’ 28 Aug.; Mayoress in O'Keeffe's ‘Peeping Tom,’ 6 Sept. 1784; Mrs. Mummery in O'Keeffe's ‘Beggar on Horseback,’ 16 June 1785; Lady Simple in the younger Colman's ‘Turk and no Turk,’ 9 July; Mrs. Scout in the ‘Village Lawyer,’ 28 Aug. 1787; Lady Dunder in Colman's ‘Ways and Means,’ 10 July 1788; Mrs. Malmsey in ‘Family Party,’ 11 July 1789; and Mrs. Maggs in O'Keeffe's ‘London Hermit.’ Other characters assigned her at one or other house were Lady Mary Oldboy in ‘Lionel and Clarissa,’ Lockit in the ‘Beggar's Opera’ (with the male characters played by women and vice versa), Mrs. Amlet in the ‘Confederacy,’ Mrs. Otter in the ‘Silent Woman,’ Mrs. Heidelberg in the ‘Clandestine Marriage,’ Old Lady Lambert in the ‘Hypocrite,’ Lady Wishfort in the ‘Way of the World,’ Dorcas in the ‘Mock Doctor,’ Widow Lackit in ‘Oroonoko,’ Tag in ‘Miss in her Teens,’ Mrs. Dangle in the ‘Critic,’ Widow Blackacre in the ‘Plain Dealer,’ Falstaff (a strange experiment for her benefit), Ursula in the ‘Padlock,’ Mrs. Fardingale in the ‘Funeral,’ Lady Dove in Cumberland's ‘Brothers,’ Mrs. Sealand in ‘Conscious Lovers,’ Mrs. Malaprop, Mrs. Grub in ‘Cross Purposes,’ Mother-in-law in the ‘Chances,’ and Mrs. Mechlin in the ‘Commissary.’ On 5 Nov. 1793 at Covent Garden she played the Duenna, and on the 7th Miss Spinster in ‘Every One has his Fault.’ On the 24th she died.
Mrs. Webb was a good actress with much humour, her best parts being Mrs. Cheshire and Mabel Flourish. She was corpulent in her late years, and was seen to advantage in grotesque characters. Her Lockit did much to recommend the strange experiment of Colman of which it was a feature. A portrait by Dewilde as Lady Dove in the ‘Brothers’ is in the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club, in the catalogue of which she is erroneously said to have appeared in London as Miss Cross.
[Genest's Account of the English Stage; Gilliland's Dramatic Mirror; Thespian Dictionary; Gent. Mag. 1793, ii. 1061, 1147.]
WEBB, BENJAMIN (1819–1885), ecclesiologist and parish priest, eldest son of Benjamin Webb, of the firm of Webb & Sons, wheelwrights, of London, was born at Addle Hill, Doctor's Commons, on 28 Nov. 1819. On 2 Oct. 1828 he was admitted to St. Paul's school under Dr. John Sleath [q. v.], and proceeded with an exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1838. He graduated B.A. in 1842, M.A. in 1845. While still an undergraduate he, together with his somewhat older friend, John Mason Neale [q. v.], founded the Cambridge Camden Society, which played an important part in the ecclesiological revival consequent upon the tractarian movement, and of which Webb continued to be secretary, both at Cambridge and afterwards in London (whither it was removed in 1848 under the name of the Ecclesiological Society), from its beginning to its extinction in 1863. With Webb and Neale were associated in this enterprise Webb's intimate and lifelong friend Alexander James Beresford-Hope [q. v.] and Frederick Apthorp Paley [q. v.] The society restored the ‘round church’ at Cambridge, and Webb had the honour of showing the restored edifice to the poet Wordsworth. Webb was early recognised as a leading authority on questions of ecclesiastical art (see Liddon, Life of Pusey i. 476–480). He was ordained deacon in 1842 and priest in 1843, and served as curate first under his college tutor, Archdeacon Thorpe (who had been the first president of the Cambridge Camden Society), at Kemerton in Gloucestershire, and afterwards at Brasted in Kent, under William Hodge Mill [q. v.], who, as regius professor of Hebrew, had countenanced and encouraged his ecclesiological work at Cambridge, and whose daughter he married in 1847. He was also for a while curate to William Dodsworth [q. v.] at Christ Church, St. Pancras, London. In 1851 he was presented by Beresford-Hope to the perpetual curacy of Sheen in Staffordshire, and in 1862 by Lord Palmerston, on the recommendation of Mr. Gladstone, to the crown living of St. Andrew's, Wells Street, London, which he retained till his death. Under him this church obtained a wide celebrity for the musical excellence of its services, and became the centre of an elaborate and efficient system of confraternities, schools, and parochial institutions, in establishing which his powers of practical organisation found a congenial field of exercise. Among these may be especially mentioned his catechetical classes for children and young women of the upper classes, which may be compared with those held by Dupanloup at Paris; and also the day nursery or crèche, said to have been the first of its kind in London.
