FERGUSON, JAMES (1710–1776), Scottish mechanician and astronomer, was born near Rothiemay in Banffshire on the 25th of April 1710, of parents in very humble circumstances. He first learned to read by overhearing his father teach his elder brother, and with the help of an old woman was “able,” he says in his autobiography, “to read tolerably well before his father thought of teaching him.” After receiving further instruction in reading from his father, who also taught him to write, he was sent at the age of seven for three months to the grammar school at Keith. His taste for mechanics was about this time accidentally awakened on seeing his father making use of a lever to raise a part of the roof of his house—an exhibition of seeming strength which at first “excited his terror as well as wonder.” In 1720 he was sent to a neighbouring farm to keep sheep, where in the daytime he amused himself by making models of mills and other machines, and at night in studying the stars. Afterwards, as a servant with a miller, and then with a doctor, he met with hardships which rendered his constitution feeble through life. Being compelled by his weak health to return home, he there amused himself with making a clock having wooden wheels and a whalebone spring. When slightly recovered he showed this and some other inventions to a neighbouring gentleman, who engaged him to clean his clocks, and also desired him to make his house his home. He there began to draw patterns for needlework, and his success in this art led him to think of becoming a painter. In 1734 he went to Edinburgh, where he began to take portraits in miniature, by which means, while engaged in his scientific studies, he supported himself and his family for many years. Subsequently he settled at Inverness, where he drew up his Astronomical Rotula for showing the motions of the planets, places of the sun and moon, &c., and in 1743 went to London, which was his home for the rest of his life. He wrote various papers for the Royal Society, of which he became a fellow in 1763, devised astronomical and mechanical models, and in 1748 began to give public lectures on experimental philosophy. These he repeated in most of the principal towns in England. His deep interest in his subject, his clear explanations, his ingeniously constructed diagrams, and his mechanical apparatus rendered him one of the most successful of popular lecturers on scientific subjects. It is, however, as the inventor and improver of astronomical and other scientific apparatus, and as a striking instance of self-education, that he claims a place among the most remarkable men of science of his country. During the latter years of his life he was in receipt of a pension of £50 from the privy purse. He died in London on the 17th of November 1776.
Ferguson’s principal publications are Astronomical Tables (1763); Lectures on Select Subjects (1st ed., 1761, edited by Sir David Brewster in 1805); Astronomy explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles (1756, edited by Sir David Brewster in 1811); and Select Mechanical Exercises, with a Short Account of the Life of the Author, written by himself (1773). This autobiography is included in a Life by E. Henderson, LL.D. (1st ed., 1867; 2nd, 1870), which also contains a full description of Ferguson’s principal inventions, accompanied with illustrations. See also The Story of the Peasant-Boy Philosopher, by Henry Mayhew (1857).
FERGUSON, ROBERT (c. 1637–1714), British conspirator
and pamphleteer, called the “Plotter,” was a son of William
Ferguson (d. 1699) of Badifurrow, Aberdeenshire, and after
receiving a good education, probably at the university of Aberdeen,
became a Presbyterian minister. According to Bishop
Burnet he was cast out by the Presbyterians; but whether this
be so or not, he soon made his way to England and became vicar
of Godmersham, Kent, from which living he was expelled by
the Act of Uniformity in 1662. Some years later, having gained
meanwhile a reputation as a theological controversialist and
become a person of importance among the Nonconformists, he
attracted the notice of the earl of Shaftesbury and the party
which favoured the exclusion of the duke of York (afterwards
King James II.) from the throne, and he began to write political
pamphlets just at the time when the feeling against the Roman
Catholics was at its height. In 1680 he wrote “A Letter to a
Person of Honour concerning the ‘Black Box,’” in which he
supported the claim of the duke of Monmouth to the crown
against that of the duke of York; returning to the subject after
Charles II. had solemnly denied the existence of a marriage
between himself and Lucy Waters. He took an active part in
the controversy over the Exclusion Bill, and claimed to be the
author of the whole of the pamphlet “No Protestant Plot”
(1681), parts of which are usually ascribed to Shaftesbury.
Ferguson was deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot, although
he asserted that he had frustrated both this and a subsequent
attempt to assassinate the king, and he fled to Holland with
Shaftesbury in 1682, returning to England early in 1683. For
his share in another plot against Charles II. he was declared an
outlaw, after which he entered into communication with Argyll,
Monmouth and other malcontents. Ferguson then took a leading
part in organizing the rising of 1685. Having overcome Monmouth’s
reluctance to take part in this movement, he accompanied
the duke to the west of England and drew up the manifesto
against James II., escaping to Holland after the battle of Sedgemoor.
He landed in England with William of Orange in 1688,
and aided William’s cause with his pen; but William and his
advisers did not regard him as a person of importance, although
his services were rewarded with a sinecure appointment in the
Excise. Chagrined at this treatment, Ferguson was soon in
correspondence with the exiled Jacobites. He shared in all the
plots against the life of William, and after his removal from
the Excise in 1692 wrote violent pamphlets against the government.
Although he was several times arrested on suspicion, he
was never brought to trial. He died in great poverty in 1714,
leaving behind him a great and deserved reputation for treachery.
It has been thought by Macaulay and others that Ferguson led
the English government to believe that he was a spy in their
interests, and that his frequent escapes from justice were due
to official connivance. In a proclamation issued for his arrest
in 1683 he is described as “a tall lean man, dark brown hair,
a great Roman nose, thin-jawed, heat in his face, speaks in the
Scotch tone, a sharp piercing eye, stoops a little in the shoulders.”
Besides numerous pamphlets Ferguson wrote: History of the
Revolution (1706); Qualifications requisite in a Minister of State
(1710); and part of the History of all the Mobs, Tumults and
Insurrections in Great Britain (London, 1715).
See James Ferguson, Robert Ferguson, the Plotter (Edinburgh, 1887), which gives a favourable account of Ferguson.
FERGUSON, SIR SAMUEL (1810–1886), Irish poet and antiquary,
was born at Belfast, on the 10th of March 1810. He
was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, was called to the Irish
bar in 1838, and was made Q.C. in 1859, but in 1867 retired
from practice upon his appointment as deputy-keeper of the
Irish records, then in a much neglected condition. He was
an excellent civil servant, and was knighted in 1878 for his
services to the department. His spare time was given to general
literature, and in particular to poetry. He had long been a
leading contributor to the Dublin University Magazine and to
Blackwood, where he had published his two literary masterpieces,
“The Forging of the Anchor,” one of the finest of modern
ballads, and the humorous prose extravaganza of “Father Tom
and the Pope.” He published Lays of the Western Gael in 1865,
Poems in 1880, and in 1872 Congal, a metrical narrative of the
heroic age of Ireland, and, though far from ideal perfection,
perhaps the most successful attempt yet made by a modern Irish
poet to revivify the spirit of the past in a poem of epic proportions.
Lyrics have succeeded better in other hands; many of
Ferguson’s pieces on modern themes, notably his “Lament for
Thomas Davis” (1845), are, nevertheless, excellent. He was an
extensive contributor on antiquarian subjects to the Transactions
of the Royal Irish Academy, and was elected its president in
1882. His manners were delightful, and his hospitality was
boundless. He died at Howth on the 9th of August 1886. His
most important antiquarian work, Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland,
Wales, Scotland, was published in the year after his death.
See Sir Samuel Ferguson in the Ireland of his Day (1896), by his wife, Mary C. Ferguson; also an article by A. P. Graves in A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the English Tongue (1900), edited by Stopford Brooke and T. W. Rolleston.
