most noted schoolmaster of his time," born about the year 1575, was the son of a carpenter of London, but grandson of a mayor of Truro, and led an adventurous life before he reached the pedagogic eminence ascribed to him. We find him entered at Merton college, Oxfordshire, in 1590, "a youth of great hope," but also, it is added, "very wild." he quitted the university abruptly, went into Spain, and entered a jesuits' college; but growing tired of its discipline, sailed with Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins in their last voyage of 1595, and was "in some esteem with the former." After this he became a military adventurer in the Low Countries, and returned to England in great poverty, wandering about the western counties, sometimes teaching children their alphabet, until at last he settled down for a time at Martock in Somersetshire, as master of its grammar-school. One of his successors there, in 1646, found grey-headed men who had been taught by him, still excellent grammarians. His fortunes mending at Martock, he repaired to London, and opened a school in Goldsmith's Abbey (or Rents), Cripplegate, where, in course of time, he joined two or three gardens and houses together, and kept a flourishing boarding and day school, out of which, according to Wood, "more churchmen and statesmen issued than from any school taught by one man in England." From London he migrated to Sevenoaks in Kent, where he was as prosperous a schoolmaster as before, and became a landed proprietor. Prince Henry, King James' scholarly and soldierly son, smiled upon his contributions to educational literature, and Charles I. ordered him to write a Latin grammar for uniform use in schools. When the great rebellion broke out, Farnabie was a royalist, and was heard to say—" It is better to have one king than five hundred." He fell into disgrace with the dominant party, was sent to Newgate, and very nearly banished to America; and, after a long imprisonment, died on the 12th of June, 1647. His epitaph in Sevenoaks church commemorates both his learning and his loyalty. Farnabie's works were chiefly notes to Classics, Juvenal, Martial, Virgil, Terence, Ovid, &c. They were long thought highly of, and Bayle has praised them as of great use to young beginners.—F. E.
FARNBOROUGH, Charles Long, Lord, was born in 1761, and was the son of Beeston Long, a wealthy West Indian merchant. He entered parliament as member for Rye in 1789, and afterwards sat for Midhurst, Haslemere, and Wendover. In 1805 he was appointed secretary of state for Ireland. He was on terms of great friendship with Pitt, and held office under him. He was postmaster-general for some years; and when he resigned that office in 1826, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Farnborough. His lordship was a great patron of the fine arts; and George IV. not only made a personal friend of him, but consulted his judgment on all matters relative to the improvement of the royal palaces, and the selection of paintings and sculpture. He died in the year 1838.—W. H. P. G.
FARNESE, House of, a noble Italian family, originally belonging to the district of Orvieto in the Papal States. They were raised to princely rank in the sixteenth century by Pope Paul III. (formerly Cardinal Alessandro Farnese). Through the love which he bore to his son. Pier Luigi—a partiality which made the pontiff blind to the infamous conduct which disgraced the latter—he moved heaven and earth to procure him a throne. Having failed to obtain for him from Charles V. the duchy of Milan, he gave up to him Parma and Piacenza, bestowing upon him the title of duke. Pier Luigi, whose profligacy while he was Gonfaloniere Delia Chiesa in the papal dominions, had already brought shame and desolation on the provinces committed to his care, inflicted on his new subjects every injury which tyranny can contrive. At last a conspiracy of the principal citizens of Parma, fostered by Ferdinando Gonzaga, lieutenant of Charles V. at Milan, put a violent end to his life and crimes in September, 1547.—Ottavio, his son, was prevented from immediately succeeding to the government of the duchy, by the policy of Paul III., who thought it safer for the preservation of Parma and Piacenza to take matters into his own hands, and to oppose his authority to the imperial claims on those provinces. Pope Julius III., however, granted the duchy to Ottavio, who besides contrived to have his power recognized by Philip II. of Spain, in 1556. The services rendered by his wife. Marguerite of Austria, and by his son, Alessandro, to the Spanish monarchy in the Netherlands, confirmed the alliance between him and Philip. He governed mildly and beneficially till his death in 1586.—Alessandro, his eldest son, had left his native country at a very early age in pursuit of military glory. He first distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto in 1565. Then, in 1571, he was sent by Philip II. to the Netherlands, where the victory at Gemblours over the insurgents was owing entirely to his exertions, though he was but second in command. At the death of John of Austria he was made governor of that country, and when the United Provinces implored the help of France, he showed himself a master in the art of war by worsting, in three successive campaigns (1581-2-3), the duke of Anjou and the French. All the Belgian fortresses surrendered to the Italian general. He carried on the war in France against Henry IV., and in the Netherlands against the celebrated Maurice of Nassau, and died of a severe wound received at Condebec in 1592, having never once revisited his native country. He offers one of the many examples of celebrated generals through whom enslaved Italy gave the support of individual genius and energy to the cause of her foreign oppressors.—Ranuccio I., his son, succeeded him at Parma. Though brave as a soldier, he was yet imbued with all the gloom and the despotic views of the Spanish theory of government, and proved a curse to his subjects. Through a mere suspicion of conspiracy, he instituted a political process against the first families of the duchy and their friends, and procured the total ruin of many of them. He reigned from 1592 to 1622.—Edoardo, his second son by Margherita Aldobrandini, succeeded to the dukedom. Through an excess of vanity and ambition for warlike enterprises, this prince involved his subjects in useless wars; first by taking up the cause of France against Spain, for the succession of Mantua, and afterwards by quarrelling, on account of money obligations, with Pope Urban VIII. He died in 1646, and was succeeded by his son, Ranuccio II., who proved as bad a ruler as his father. One Godefroy—a French teacher of languages—who was raised by him to the office of prime minister, brought disgrace upon him by causing the bishop of Castro—an enemy to the duke—to be assassinated. The consequence of this crime was a war with Pope Innocent X., in which the duke was defeated, and the beheading of Godefroy by order of his master. Ranuccio had three sons, of whom Odoardo, the eldest, died a year before his father, in 1693, leaving a daughter, Elisabetta Farnese (see Elizabeth Farnese), who was subsequently married to Philip V. of Spain. The other two sons, Francescov and Antonio, held successively the reins of government, and both died without offspring—the former in 1727, the latter in 1731. With them the Farnese family became extinct. During their rule, the foreign powers which were fighting in Italy for the Spanish succession treated them as vassals, and the last duke was doomed to be a helpless witness of the disposal of his states to the Bourbons of Spain, in consequence of their connection with Elisabetta Farnese.—A. S., O.
FARNEWORTH, Ellis, a distinguished translator, was born at Bonteshall, Derbyshire, of which his father was rector. He was educated at Chesterfield school, Eton, and at Jesus college, Cambridge. In 1762 he was presented to the rectory of Carsington, Derbyshire, but died in the following year. He translated Leti's Life of Pope Sixtus V.; Davila's History of France; Machiavelli on the Art of War; and Fleury's History of the Israelites.—J. L. A.
FARQUHAR, George, a dramatic writer of great celebrity, was born in the city of Londonderry in the year 1678. His father belonged to a family of consideration in the north of Ireland, and was rector of the parish of Lessan in the county of Tyrone. George was one of seven children; and the rector's means being but small, the lad, after an education in his native town, entered Trinity college, Dublin, in the humble rank of a sizar on the 17th July, 1694. His course was not a creditable one, so far as it went. A thesis having been given to him on the miracle of Christ's walking on the water, he treated it ex tempore, and with such unbecoming levity that it led to his expulsion. His inclinations, as well as his poverty, led him to attempt the stage, and he joined the company of Joseph Ashbury, then the manager of the Smock-Alley theatre in Dublin, at the moderate salary of twenty shillings a week. He made his debut as Othello, and was not altogether unsuccessful, having many qualities to make a tolerable actor. Here he played for two years, and might have gone to his grave with the character of respectable mediocrity as an actor, and a fame that would scarcely have outlived his own generation, had not an accident occurred to change his course of life from the actor to the writer of dramas. He was performing Guyomar in Dryden's drama of
