HIGGINS HOARE. 



519 



contains ruins of castles and other works of the 

 middle ages. Near the town, in 1463, was fought 

 the sanguinary battle of Hexham, in which lord 

 Montacute, brother of the earl of Warwick, at the 

 head of an army of Yorkists, utterly defeated the 

 Lancastrians, when the earl of Somerset, and sev- 

 eral other men of rank, were taken prisoners, and 

 immediately executed. In 1761, Hexham was the 

 scene of domestic discord, an insurrection of the 

 miners having taken place ; they were opposed by 

 the North York militia, and were not suppressed 

 till after numbers of them had been killed and 

 wounded by the troops. Several eminent persons 

 have been connected with this place. Among the 

 bishops of Hexham, were Cuthbert and John of 

 Beverley, both canonized, and Acca, the friend of 

 Bede ; John of Hexham and Richard of Hexham, 

 two monastic historians, were priors of the monas- 

 tery; and Joseph Richardson, a comic writer of 

 some eminence, was born here in 1758; John 

 Tweddale, a learned and ingenious traveller, who 

 died at Athens in 1799, was likewise a native of 

 this place or its vicinity. Population of town and 

 parish in 1841, 5989. 



HIGGINS, GODFREY, ESQ., F.S.A., of Skel- 

 low Grange, near Doncaster, and a magistrate for 

 the West Riding of Yorkshire ; was the only son 

 of Godfrey Higgins, Esq., who purchased Skellow 

 Grange, by Christiana Matterson ; and succeeded 

 his father in his estates, shortly after coming of 

 age, May 23, 1794. Mr Higgins was the author 

 of the following works: " A Letter to Earl Fitz- 

 william on the Abuses of the York Lunatic Asy- 

 lum," 1814, 8vo. A second Tract on the same 

 subject, together with the Report of a Committee 

 of the House of Commons. " A Letter to the 

 HoUse of Commons," written at Geneva, immedi- 

 ately on the passing of Mr Peel's bill for the re- 

 storation of a metallic currency, in which the dif- 

 ficulties of carrying that measure into effect were 

 pointed out. " An Address to the House of Lords 

 and Commons on the Corn Laws," in which, to- 

 gether with a concluding pamphlet, published in 

 No. LIII. of " The Pamphleteer," the leading doc- 

 trines of the new school of political economy are 

 controverted. " Horre Sabbaticae," in which the 

 Christian Sabbath, or the Sunday, is shown to be 

 a human, not a divine institution, a festival, not 

 a day of humiliation, to be kept by all consistent 

 Christians with joy and gladness, like Christmas 

 Day and Easter Sunday, and not like Ash Wednes- 

 day or Good Friday. " The Celtic Druids," 1827, 

 4to. " Mohammed ; or the Illustrious. An Apo- 

 logy for the Life and Character of the celebrated 

 Prophet of Arabia," 1829, 8vo. An able refu- 

 tation of some of the extraordinary opinions pro- 

 mulgated in this work was written by Edward 

 Upham, Esq., the author of " The History of Bud- 

 hism," and inserted in the " Gentleman's Maga- 

 zine," for January, 1S30. Mr Higgins made a 

 brief reply in the following month; and Mr Upham 

 rejoined in March. 



Mr Higgins married in 1800, Jane, daughter 

 and heiress of Richard Thorpe, Esq. ; and by that 

 lady, who died at Bath, May, 18, 1822, had one 

 son, the present Godfrey Higgins, Esq., of Skel- 

 low Grange ; and two daughters. His death took 

 place on the 9th Aug. 1833. 



HIPPURIC ACID ; a peculiar organic acid, 

 which exists in the urine of the horse and cow. It 

 contains, according to Liebig, the organic or com- 

 pound radical of the benzoic acid, and hence, 



when boiled with acids, it readily yields the lat- 

 ter. 



HOARE, PRINCE, Esq., Secretary for Foreign 

 Correspondence to the royal academy, F. S. A. and 

 M.R.S.L. ; was the son of Mr William Hoare, a 

 painter, and one of the original members of the 

 royal academy, and was born at Bath, in 1755. 

 He began his career as an artist, under the instruc- 

 tions of his father ; came to London at the age of 

 seventeen as a student at the royal academy, and 

 afterwards continued his professional education by 

 visiting Rome in 1776, where he studied under 

 Mengs, and had Fuseli and Northcote among his 

 companions. On returning, in 1780, to England, 

 he devoted himself for a while to the practice of 

 his profession in London ; but ill health compelled 

 him to relinquish the arts, and for the recovery of 

 his strength he topk a voyage to Lisbon. On his 

 return he directed his attention to dramatic com- 

 position ; and with such success, especially in small 

 after-pieces, that many of them still retain their 

 original popularity. His first production was a 

 tragedy, entitled " Such Things Were," formed on 

 the history of Kirk's cruelty in the reign of James 

 II., and first acted at Bath on the 2d Jan. 1788, 

 while Mr Hoare was absent at Liverpool. On the 

 16th of April, in the same year, his pleasant and 

 popular comic opera of " No Song no Supper " was 

 first acted at Drury Lane. On the 3d of May, 

 1791, was produced at the same theatre his musi- 

 cal entertainment called " The Cave of Tro, 

 phonius;" and on the 23d of May, 1792, at the 

 Haymarket, his "Dido, Queen of Carthage," trans- 

 lated from Metastasio, which, though aided by 

 the performance of Madame Mara in the principal 

 character, by the music of Storace, and by splen- 

 did scenery, met with but a cold reception. It 

 was, however, his first published work. On the 

 1 1th March, 1793, his farce of " The Prize, or 2, 

 5, 3, 8," was first acted at the Haymarket, for Sig- 

 nora Storace; it was very successful, and became 

 a stock piece. On the 16th December, in the 

 same year, he again complimented Signora Storace 

 on a similar occasion with the first performance of 

 his farce of " My Grandmother," which was also 

 favourably received. In 1795 he produced a mu- 

 sical comedy, entitled " The Three and the Deuce," 

 afterwards printed in 1806. His next production 

 was " Lock and Key," a musical farce, first acted 

 at Covent Garden, Feb. 2, 1796, with great ap- 

 plause ; and this was followed on the 30th of 

 April by his " Mahmoud," a musical opera, per- 

 formed at Drury Lane. At the same theatre, two 

 days after, his first dramatic production was again 

 brought forward, for the benefit of Mrs Siddons, 

 under the title of "Julia, or Such Things Were," 

 and it was then published. On the 25th April, 

 1797, another opera from his pen, called " The 

 Italian Villagers," was produced at Covent Garden, 

 and in the same year he wrote a musical enter- 

 tainment called " A Friend in Need." In 1799 he 

 produced a comedy entitled " Sighs, or the Daugh- 

 ter," from the German of Kotzebue; arid "The 

 Captive of Spilsburg," a musical entertainment al- 

 tered from the French " Le Souterrain." His sub- 

 sequent dramatic works were, " Children ; or Give 

 them their Way," a comic drama, and " Indiscre- 

 tion," a comedy, 1800; " Chains of the Heart, or 

 the Slave by Choice," an opera, 1802; "The 

 Paragraph," a musical entertainment, 1804 ; 

 " Partners," a comedy, 1805 ; " Something to do," 

 a comedy, 1803. In consequence of being ap- 



