759 



STRANGE, SIR ROBERT. 



STRANGFORU, VISCOUNT. 



760 



them from the manufacture of wool (which, unless otherwise directed, 

 I shall by all means discourage), and then enforcing them to fetch 

 their clothing from thence, and to take their salt from the king (being 

 that which preserves and gives value to all their native staple commo- 

 dities), how can they depart from us without nakedness and beggary ? 

 Which in itself ia so weighty a consideration, as a small profit should 

 not bear it down." (' Let. and Desp.,' vol. i. p. 193.) 



In one particular he did benefit Ireland. At his own risk he im- 

 ported and sowed a quantity of superior flax-seed. The first crop 

 having succeeded, he next year laid out 1000?. on the undertaking, set 

 up a number of looms, procuring workmen from France and Flanders, 

 and sent a ship to Spain freighted with linen at his own risk. Thus 

 began the linen manufacture of Ireland, which in some measure verified 

 Wentworth' s prediction that it would greatly benefit that country. 

 (Strafford, 'Let. and Desp.,' vol. i. p. 473.) 



Wentworth appears to have been of very infirm health, which, 

 taken with the general course of his education and his position in 

 society, will in part account for the acerbity and irritability of temper, 

 and the impatience of any opposition to his will, which throughout 

 his career involved him in so many personal quarrels. The number of 

 powerful personal enemies which Wentworth thus arrayed against 

 himself appears to us to be a proof of the want of real political talent 

 of a high order. A really wise politician, such as Oliver Cromwell for 

 example, does not raise up such a host of powerful personal enemies. 

 Laud gives a good hint about this in one of his letters. " And yet, 

 my lord," he says, " if you could find a way.. to do all these great 

 services and decline these storms, I think it would be excellent well 

 thought on." (Strafford, ' Let. and Desp.,' vol. i. p. 497.) 



In 1639 Charles raised Wentworth to the dignity of an earl, which 

 he had in vain solicited formerly. He was created Earl of Strafford 

 and Baron of Raby, and invested with the title of lord-lieutenant, or 

 lieutenant-general of Ireland a title which had not been borne since 

 the time of Essex. 



In 1640 the Earl of Northumberland being attacked by severe 

 illness, the king appointed Strafford in his place, to the command of 

 the army against the Scots. He does not appear to have performed 

 anything here to make good either his own high pretensions or the 

 character for valour given him by some writers. Of his impeachment 

 at the opening of the Long Parliament, Clarendon gives the following 

 account : "It was about three of the clock in the afternoon, when 

 the Earl of Strafford (being infirm and not well disposed in health, 

 and. so not having stirred out of his house that morning), hearing that 

 both houses still sate, thought fit to go thither. . It was believed by 

 some (upon what ground was never clear enough) that he made that 

 haste there to accuse the Lord Say, and some others, of having induced 

 the Scots to invade the kingdom; but he was scarce entered into the 

 house of peers, when the message from the House of Commons was 

 called in, and when Mr. Pyui at the bar, and in the name of all the 

 Commons of England, impeached Thomas, earl of Strafford (with the 

 addition of all his other titles), of high treason." 



In the article PYM we have shortly adverted to the trial of the Earl 

 of Strafford for high treason. To the remarks made there we may 

 add that, though it was not to be supposed or expected that the 

 Statute of Treasons of Edward III. (25 Edward III., st. 5, c. 2), being 

 made to protect the king, not the subject, would provide specially for 

 the punishment of such attempts as those of Strafford ; it does 

 nevertheless appear that Strafford was punishable for having become the 

 instrument for administering the government of the Council of the 

 North, carried on in direct violation of the Petition of Right, which 

 during the time of Strafford's being president of that council was the 

 law of the land. However the Commons changed their course and 

 introduced a bill of attainder, which was passed on the 21st of April, 

 in the Commons, and soon after in the Lords. The king with tears in 

 his eyes and other demonstrations of weakness characteristic of him 

 signed a commission for giving the royal assent to the bill, and 

 then made some feeble and unavailing efforts to save the life of his 

 obnoxious minister. " The resort to the bill of attainder," observes 

 Mr. Forster (' Life of Strafford,' p. 404), "arose from no failure of the 

 impeachment, as has been frequently alleged, but because in the 

 course of that impeachment circumstances arose which suggested to 

 the great leader of the popular cause the greater safety of fixing this 

 case upon wider grounds. Without stretching to the slightest extent 

 the boundaries of any statute, they thought it better at once to bring 

 Strafford's treason to the condemnation of the sources of all law." 



Strafford was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 12th of May 1641. 

 In his walk from the Tower to the place of execution his step and 

 manner are described by Rushworth as being those of "a general 

 marching at the head of an army, to breathe victory, rather than 

 those of a condemned man, to undergo the sentence of death." 

 Within a few weeks after his death, the parliament mitigated the 

 penalties of their sentence to his children. In the succeeding reign, 

 the attainder was reversed, and his son was restored to the earldom. 



STRANGE, SIR BOBERT, a descendant of the family of Strange 

 of Balcasky, in the county of Fife, was born at Pomona, one of the 

 Orkney Isles, on the 14th of July 1721. After successively adopting 

 and abandoning the study of the law and the pursuit of a sea-faring 

 life, he was apprenticed to an engraver, Mr. Cooper of Edinburgh, 

 who had a considerable establishment and a school for apprentices. 



He had studied for a considerable time, when he joined the forces of 

 the Pretender, and was appointed a lieutenant in the Life Guards, a 

 step he was induced to take with a view of obtaining the hand of 

 Miss Isabella Lumisden, who consented to marry him " on condition 

 that he should fight for the prince," and who did marry him in 1747. 

 After the battle of Culloden he sought refuge in the Highlands, where 

 he suffered the severest privations. Subsequently he ventured to 

 Edinburgh, where he subsisted upon the produce of a sale of his 

 drawings of the chiefs of the rebellion, which he privately disposed of 

 at a guinea each. He had also made a half-length portrait of the 

 Pretender, from which he subsequently made an engraving the first 

 he executed on his own account. After his marriage he went abroad, 

 and at Rouen obtained an honorary prize for design, when he pro- 

 ceeded to Paris, where he studied engraving under the celebrated Le 

 Bas, from whom he learned the use of the dry point, of which he 

 made such successful use in his own plates ; he also worked for a time 

 with Descamps. In 1751 Strange settled in London, and soon estab- 

 lished a high reputation as an historical engraver, of which class he is 

 considered to be the first in the English school. 



In 1760 he again went abroad, and executed plates after pictures 

 by many of the greatest of the old masters, and was made a member 

 of the academies of Rome, Florence, Bologna, Parma, and Paris. On 

 his return to England, he was received with every mark of distinction, 

 aud in January 1787 was knighted, though he complains incessantly 

 of suffering persecution on account of his supposed Jacobite principles. 

 He died on the 5th of July 1792. He left a widow, three sons, and 

 one daughter, amply provided for by the fruits of his industry and 

 ability. His gains were, it is only right to notice, considerably 

 increased by dealing in pictures, in which his shrewdness as well as 

 his knowledge appear to have stood him in good stead. Strange is 

 the only Englishman whose portrait is introduced in the painting in 

 the Vatican of ' The Progress of Engraving.' Force, vigour, clearness, 

 and precision are the prevailing characteristics of his style, nor is he 

 less noted for the careful distinction which he makes in his plates 

 between the texture of the various materials represented. He was the 

 author of an unpublished treatise entitled ' The History of the Pro- 

 gress of Engraving/ to which he added impressions of his principal 

 plates and a portrait of himself. He also commenced an Autobio- 

 graphy, which is printed in Mr. Dennistoun's very amusing work 

 referred to below. The following is a list of Strange's most import- 

 ant works : ' St. Cecilia,' after Raffaelle ; the ' Virgin and Infant 

 Christ,' with Mary Magdalen, St. Jerome, and two Angels, after 

 Correggio ; 'Mary Magdalen,' 'The Death of Cleopatra,' 'Fortune 

 flying over a Globe,' ' Venus attended by the Graces,' and ' Joseph and 

 Potiphar's Wife,' after Guido ; ' Christ appearing to the Virgin after 

 his Resurrection,' 'Abraham expelling Hagar,' 'Esther and Ahasuer us,' 

 and the ' Death of Dido,' after Guercino ; ' Venus and Adonis,' ' Venus 

 reclining,' and ' Danae,' after Titian ; ' Romulus and Ream?,' and 

 ' Caesar repudiating Pompeia,' after Pietro da Cortona ; ' Sappho con- 

 secrating, her Lyre,' after Carlo Dolci; the 'Martyrdom of St. Agnes,' 

 after Domenichino ; ' Belisarius,' after Salvator Rosa ; ' The Virgin 

 with St. Catherine and Angels contemplating the Infant Jesus,' after 

 Carlo Maratti ; ' The Choice of Hercules,' after Nicolas Poussiu ; and 

 the ' Return from Market,' after Philip Wouvermans. Amongst his 

 portrait engravings may be particularly mentioned the Children of 

 Charles I., and Queen Henrietta Maria, with the Prince of Wales, 

 and Duke of York, after Vandyke. 



(Memoirs of Sir Robert Strange, Knight, Engraver; and of his 

 Brother-in-law, Andrew Lumisden, Private Secretary to the Stuart 

 Princes. By James Dennistoun of Dennistoun. 2 vols. 8vo, 1855.) 



STRANGFORD, PERCY CLINTON SYDNEY SMYTHE, SIXTH 

 VISCOUNT, was born in 1780, and graduated in 1800 at Trinity 

 College, Dublin, obtaining the gold medal and other honorary dis- 

 tinctions. He entered the diplomatic service early. Before he was of 

 age he had gained a high reputation by his contributions to the 

 'Poetic Register.' In 1801 he succeeded to his father's Irish peerage, 

 and became secretary of legation at Lisbon. Here his love of lan- 

 guage and poetry led him to master the Portuguese language, and to 

 translate the poems of Camoens, to which he prefixed the life of that 

 poet. This translation is highly praised by both Lord Byron and 

 Thomas Moore, and attained considerable popularity, several editions 

 having been called for. He became afterwards British envoy at 

 Lisbon, and accompanied the court and royal family of Portugal to 

 Brazil. In 1817 he became ambassador at Stockholm, from whence he 

 was transferred in 1 820 to the Sublime Porte, and to St. Petersburg 

 in 1825. In 1828 he was sent on a special mission to the Brazils. He 

 was created a D.C.L. of Oxford in 1834, at the installation of the 

 Duke of Wellington, with whom he had been associated as co-pleni- 

 potentiary at the Congress of Verona. He was made in 1825 a Knight 

 Grand Cross of the Hanoverian Guelphic Order, and raised to the 

 peerage of England as Lord Penshurst. Lord Strangford WMS an 

 ardent lover and patron of literature and the fine arts, an active 

 member and vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries, and a 

 frequent contributor, under the initials of P. C. S. S., to the ' Gentle- 

 man's Magazine ' and ' Notes and Queries.' He was collecting 

 materials for the biography of his ancestor Endymion Porter, to 

 whom Milton has addressed a sonnet, when he was carried off by a 

 short illness May 29, 1855. 



