November, 1839, he found Dundee in a state of great excitement on account of "a revival" which had taken place in his absence, and resumed his labours with redoubled zeal and most gratifying success. His useful life was suddenly cut short by fever, which terminated fatally on the 25th of March, 1843, in the thirtieth year of his age. His reputation as an eloquent preacher and a devoted pastor was very high, and his "Life and Remains" has obtained an extensive circulation.—J. T.
MACCLESFIELD, Thomas Parker, first earl of, lord chancellor of England, was the son of a provincial attorney, and born in 1666 at Leek in Staffordshire. He began his career as an attorney at Derby; and meeting with success, removed to London and went to the bar. "Silver-tongued Parker," as he was called, rose to be the leader of his circuit—the Midland—and entering the house of commons as a staunch whig became one of the managers of Sacheverell's impeachment. During its course he succeeded Holt as lord-chief-justice, and after the accession of George I. was raised to the peerage, and in 1718 received the great seal. After the bursting of the South Sea Bubble he was accused of selling the masterships of the court of chancery and of conniving at fraudulent dealings on the part of the masters with the trust-funds committed to their charge. Impeached and tried by the house of peers in 1725, he was found guilty and fined £30,000. He lingered on, solitary and obscure, until his death in 1732.—F. E.
* M'CLINTOCK, Sir Francis Leopold, was born in Dundalk in Ireland, July 9, 1819; entered the royal navy of Britain in 1831; and attained to the rank of lieutenant in 1845 for distinguished conduct during operations for recovery of H.M.S. Gorgon, then stranded at Monte Video. Three years later, and after intervening service in the Pacific Ocean, he first became engaged in the field of arctic adventure—sailing under Sir James C. Ross, and in company with M'Clure, in the Enterprise, fitted out in 1848 for the search after Franklin (see M'Clure), and accompanied Ross in his pedestrian journey of five hundred miles and forty days along the shore of North Somerset. Thence to the date of the voyage which, conducted by himself, closed the series of the Franklin expeditions, the name of M'Clintock is intimately associated with arctic exploration. In 1850 he was first lieutenant of the Assistance—one of the ships which belonged to Captain Austin's squadron—and made a sledge journey on foot from Griffith's Island to Melville Island and back, over nine hundred miles, in sixty days, depositing upon Melville Island in June, 1851, a record which, discovered in the following year by M'Clure, eventually led to the rescue of the latter. It was by this expedition that the first traces of the missing navigators were found upon Beechy Island.—(See Austin, Horatio Thomas.) The Assistance returned to England in 1851, to be again despatched in the following year, as one of the squadron commanded by Sir Edward Belcher. Upon this occasion M'Clintock, promoted to the rank of commander, sailed in command of the Intrepid steamer, attached to the Resolute under Captain Kellet. Two successive winters were passed by the officers and crew of the Resolute and Intrepid within the arctic regions—the former of them at Dealy Island, lat. 74° 56´, long. 109° W. It was during this winter—1852-53—that M'Clintock's powers of endurance, not less than his foresight and fertility of resource, were strikingly displayed in the prolonged sledge-journeys which he conducted on the ice. Upon one of these journeys he was absent from the ship one hundred and five days; during which time he had travelled a distance of one thousand three hundred and twenty-eight miles, and explored above eight hundred miles of new coast. In May, 1854, the Resolute was abandoned in the ice of Barrow Strait—lat. 74° 40´, long. 111° 25´ W.—where she had become fixed during the preceding winter; and her officers and crew returned to England. M'Clintock's distinguishing achievement in arctic adventure was, however, yet to come. When, in 1857, Lady Franklin's final effort of search was determined on, it was felt on all hands that in placing the Fox—a yacht of one hundred and seventy tons—under the command of Captain M'Clintock, the surest pledge was afforded that no effort would be left untried for the successful issue of an enterprise which excited the deepest interest throughout the civilized world. How successfully the mission of the Fox was accomplished is told elsewhere (see Franklin, Sir John); but a detailed perusal of the narrative of her voyage can alone enable us to render due praise to the ability of her commander, and to the self-sacrificing spirit in which all who were engaged in the undertaking performed their allotted task. Shortly after the return of the Fox to England, in the autumn of 1859, M'Clintock received the well-merited honour of knighthood. In the following year he was presented with the queen's gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, as well as with addresses from the Dublin Royal Society—of which he was made an honorary member—and from the corporations of the cities of Dublin and London: honorary degrees were also conferred on him by the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin. In 1860 he was appointed to command the Bulldog, to take soundings in the Atlantic Ocean between the Faroe Isles, Greenland, and Labrador. In May, 1861, he was appointed to command H.M.S. Doris, serving on the coast of Syria.—W. H.
* M'CLURE, Sir Robert John le Mesurier, was born in Wexford, Ireland, January 28, 1807. He was a posthumous child, and in his fourth year was sent to his godfather. General Le Mesurier, governor of Alderney, where he remained till twelve years of age, whence he went to Eton and afterwards to Sandhurst. The military profession was, however, not to his taste, and at sixteen he was appointed, through the influence of his godfather, a midshipman on board Lord Nelson's old ship the Victory. During the next ten years he saw much active service; and in 1836, having passed his examination as lieutenant, he joined as a volunteer the expedition then setting out to the North pole under Sir George Back, and sailed with him in the Terror, on the 14th January. After distinguishing himself in that perilous expedition, which narrowly escaped destruction, he reached his native land in September, 1837, and was gazetted lieutenant. He next served in the Hastings off the coast of Canada, where he distinguished himself by dispersing a band of notorious freebooters and capturing their chief, Kelly, though the British government declined to give M'Clure the offered reward of £5000, as the capture was made on the American side of the frontier. He was, however, appointed superintendent of the dockyard, and subsequently placed in command of the Romney, which he retained till 1846. After a service of two years in the coast guard, he again volunteered in the expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, as first lieutenant under Sir James Ross. On this expedition the Enterprise and the Investigator sailed on the 12th of June, 1848, M'Clure being attached to the former. After enduring great hardships, they returned without success in November, 1849, and M'Clure was promoted to the rank of commander in recognition of his great services. Another expedition was at once determined upon, and M'Clure volunteered his services, and was given the command of the Investigator, Captain Collinson commanding the Enterprise. Their instructions were to proceed by the Pacific to Behring's Straits, and thence if possible to Melville Island. The two ships sailed from Plymouth, January 20, 1850, but parted company for ever in a gale in Magellan's Straits. The Investigator proceeded alone; and despite of an order of recall from Captain Kellett of the Herald, who met him in Behring's Straits on the 31st of June, M'Clure proceeded forward on his own responsibility. In a month he reached Cape Bathurst and Cape Parry, and discovered an island which he landed on and named Behring Island, thence passing up a strait which he named Prince of Wales' Strait, and the land on the other side after Prince Albert. When within twenty-five miles of Barrow's Strait, a north-west wind drifted the ice upon them, blocking up their passage. A floe grazed the ship, and it finally drifted back many miles, till it was frozen in on the 30th September, having accomplished, in the words of Sir Edward Parry, "the most magnificent piece of navigation ever performed in a single season, and which the whole course of arctic discovery can show nothing to equal." Having "housed over" the ship, M'Clure, with six of his crew and a sledge, travelled over the ice, and on the sixth day pitched their tent on the shores of Barrow's Straits, October 26th, 1850, thus establishing the fact of a north-west passage. On the 31st they had returned to the ship, having travelled one hundred and fifty-six miles in nine days. For ten months the Investigator was ice-bound. In July, 1851, M'Clure blasted the floe with gunpowder, and was once more free; but the northern passage was still closed with ice, so he retraced his way southwards, and turned northward round the western coast of Barrow Island, and after innumerable perils reached Mercy Bay, where they were again frozen in, on the 24th of September. The privations endured by M'Clure and his crew till their final
