LIFE OF ALBANY HANCOCK, BY DR. EMBLETON. 119 



In a memoir of the lives of men distinguished in any walk of 

 life, or who have left their mark on any department of science, 

 it is always interesting to know their origin, who and what their 

 parents were, under what auspices they were brought up, and 

 whether or not their talents were hereditary. 



Nothing now is known of the Hancock family before the time 

 of Albany's grandfather, about the middle of last century. His 

 grandmother, whose maiden name was Baker, was, by the ma- 

 ternal side, a Henzell, a member of the family of that name, 

 who, with the Tyzacks and Tytterys, brought to the Tyne and 

 Wear, and also to Staffordshire, towards the end of the sixteenth 

 century, the important art of glassmaking.* 



Thomas Hancock, Albany's grandfather, was a saddler and 

 ironmonger, at the north end of Tyne Bridge, before the year 

 1771. He had two sons, John and Henry. John, the elder, 

 and father of Albany, was sent to school at Eedmire, in York- 

 shire, under the Bev. T. Heslop, a clergyman of the Church of 

 England. He showed much ability, and on leaving school joined 

 his father in business. This he pursued more from principle 

 than from love of it, for he used to say, when leaving his young 

 companions for the shop, he " was going to his duty." 



"When business was slack and the weather fine he was in the 

 habit of making, with two or three like-minded friends, trips on 

 foot into various parts of these northern counties ; spending the 

 day in a delightful search after plants, insects, and, especially, 

 shells, in the fields and woods, by the river-sides, or on the 

 rocky promontories and sandy beaches of the coast. 



John Hancock and his friends were not, however, the first in- 

 vestigators of the Flora and Fauna of the North of England. 



Wallis, in his " History of Northumberland, 1669," had al- 

 ready treated extensively of the Botany and Zoology of this 



* These three families migrated together from Bohemia in the thirteenth century, and 

 settled in the Duchy of Lorraine; there they remained three centuries, intermarrying 

 and ranking among the nobility; they were styled "Gentilshommes Verricrs." 



They were Huguenots, and, at the time of the first persecution of the Protestants in 

 France, migrated in a body to England, bringing their valuable art along with them. 

 Sec Gentleman's Mag., Vols. CC. and CCI. 



