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680 
J A M E S. 
cuftoms and manners of the inhabitants, which were found 
after his’death among his manufcripts. Returning to his 
native country, he refumed his literary ftudies with in- 
creafed ardour; and in the year 1624. was admitted to the 
degree of bachelor of divinity. Not long afterwards 
he was engaged to affift the celebrated Mr. Selden in 
compofing his Marmora Arunddiana , publiihed in 1628. 
He alfo was very lerviceable to fir Robert Cotton and his 
fon fir Thomas, in difpofing and fettling their noble li¬ 
brary; and with the former of thefe gentlemen, who 
boldly declared his opinions againft the illegal extenfion 
of the royal prerogative, he was committed clofe pril'oner 
by order of the houfe of lords in 1629. During his con¬ 
finement he wrote a copy of verfes in Englifii, which he 
prefixed to a collection of his printed pieces, bound in 
one volume, and prefented it to' the Bodleian library fome 
time before his death. That event took place in 1638, 
when he was about forty-fix years of age, at fir Thomas 
Cotton’s houfe in Weftminfter, and was occafioned by 
the attack of a quartan ague, brought upon him by a too 
intenfe application to his ftudies. Wood fays, “ he was 
noted by all that knew him to be a very good Grecian, 
poet, an excellent critic, antiquary, divine, and admira¬ 
bly well Ikilled in the Saxon and Gothic languages. No¬ 
thing was wanting to our author, and his ftudies, but a 
finecure or a prebendfhip; either of which, if conferred 
upon him, Hercules’ labour would have feemed a trifle.” 
His publifhed pieces confifted only of two Latin Sermons, 
and five Englifh ones ; Poemata qua dam in Mart, clarijf. Vir. 
Roberti Cotton, & Thom a Allen , 1633, 4-to. and an Englifh 
tranflation of Minutius Felix’s Oftavius, 1636, unto. 
But he left behind him forty-five manufcripts of his own 
hand-writing, which were placed by his friend Dr. Thomas 
■Greaves in the Bodleian library. His collections amount 
to twenty-four volumes in quarto, and feven in folio ; and 
chiefly confiftof feleftions-from ancient manufcripts, and 
fometimes from printed authors, relating to hiftory and 
antiquities. 
JAMES (Dr. Robert), an Englifii phyfician of great 
eminence, and particularly diftinguifhed by the prepara¬ 
tion of a moft excellent fever-pow'der, was born at Kin- 
verfton in Stafford fit ire, A. D. 1703 ; his father a major 
in the army, his mother a lifter of fir Robert Clarke. He 
was of St. John’s college in Oxford, where he took the 
degree of A. B. and afterwards praftifed phyfic at Shef¬ 
field, Lichfield, and Birmingham, fucceflively. Then he . 
removed to London, and became a licentiate in the college 
of phyficians ; and in 174.3 publifhed a Medicinal Dicti¬ 
onary, 3 vols. folio. Soon after he publifhed an Englifii 
tranflation, with a Supplement by himfelf, of Ramazzini de 
Morbus artificuni ; to which he alfo prefixed a piece of Fre¬ 
deric Hoffman upon Endemial Diftempers, 8vo. In 1746, 
The PraCtice of Phyfic, 2 vols. 8vo. In 1760, On Canine 
Madnefs, 8vo. In 1764, A Difpenfatory, 8vo. June 25,- 
1755, when the king was at Cambridge, James w'as ad¬ 
mitted by mandamps to the doCtorfhip of phyfic. In 1778 
were publifhed, A Diflertation upon Fevers, and A Vin¬ 
dication of the Fever-Powder, 8vo. with A fhort Treatife 
on the Diforders of Children, and a very good print of 
Dr. James. This was the 8th edition of the Diflertation, 
of which the firft: was printed in 1751; and the purpofe 
of it was, to let forth the fuccefs of this powder, as well 
as to defcribe more particularly the manner of adminif- 
tering it. The Vindication was pofthumous and unfi- 
niilied ; for he died March 23, 1776, while he was em¬ 
ployed upon it. 
James’s Powder, a medicine prepared by Dr. Robert 
James, of which the bafis has been long known to chemifts, 
though the particular receipt for making it lay concealed 
in Chancery till made public by Dr. Monro in his Medi¬ 
cal and Pharmaceutical Chemiftrv. The following (Dr. 
Monro iriforms us) is a copy of the receipt, extracted 
from the records of Chancery ; the inventor, when he took 
out a patent for felling his powder, having fworn, in the 
folemn manner, that it was the true and genuine 
receipt for preparing It: “ Takeantimomy, calcineitwith 
a continued protracted heat, in a flat unglazed earthen 
veffel, adding to it from time to time a fufficjent quan¬ 
tity of any animal oil and fait, well dephlegmated ; then 
boil it in melted nitre for a confiderable time, and fepa- 
rate the powder from the nitre by difiolving it in water.” 
When the doftor firft adminiftered his powder, he ufed 
to join one grain of the following mercurial preparation 
to thirty grains of his antimonial powder; but in the lat¬ 
ter part of his life he often declared that he had long laid 
afide the addition of the mercurial. His mercurial, which 
he called a pill, appears by the records of Chancery to have 
been made in the following manner: “ Purify quickfilver, 
by diftilling it nine times from an amalgam, made with 
martial regulus of antimony, and a proportional quantity 
of fal ammoniac ; difiolve this purified quickfilver in 
fpirit of nitre, evaporate to drynefs, calcine the powder 
till it becomes of a gold colour; burn fpirits of wine upon 
it, and keep it for ufe.” Dr. James, at the end of the 
receipt given into Chancery, fays, ‘‘The dok of thefe me¬ 
dicines is uftcertain ; but in general thirty grains of the 
antimonial and one grain of the mercurial is a moderate 
dofe.” 
JAMES (fir William), a diftinguifhed Britifh officer, 
was bom in 1721. He embarked in £ fea-life at twelve 
years of age; and was more than twenty years at fea be¬ 
fore he got the command of a fhip. He was with fir Ed¬ 
ward Hawke in the Weft Indies, in 1738, as a junior of¬ 
ficer. Some years after, he corinnanded a fhip in the Vir¬ 
ginia trade; '.in her he was taken by the Spaniards, in the 
Gulf of Florida, and carried a prifoner to the Havannah. 
After he and his crew were releafed from a Spanifh pri- 
fon, they embarked in a fmall brig for Carolina. The 
crew of the brig, and fir William and his people, amount¬ 
ed to fifteen. The fecond day after putting to fea, a very 
hard gale of wind came on ; the veffel {trained, and foon 
became fo leaky, that the pumps and the people bailing 
could not keep her free ; and at length, being worn out 
with labour, feven of them, with fir William, got into the 
only boat they had, with a fmall bag of bifcuit and a keg 
of water; the veffel foon after went down, and difappear- 
ed. They were twenty days in this boat without a coin- 
pafs; their bifcuit foon got wet with the fea, which for 
two days made a breach over the boat; a fnuff-box fir 
William had with him ferved to diftribute their daily al¬ 
lowance of water ; and after encountering every difficulty 
of famine and labour, on the twentieth day they found 
themfelves on the ifland of Cuba, not ten miles from 
whence they had been embarked out of a Spanifh prifon ; 
but a prifon had no horrors to them. The Spaniards re¬ 
ceived them once more into captivity ; and it is remark¬ 
able, that only one out of the feven perifhed, though, after 
they got on fhore, but few of them had the ufe of their 
limbs for many days. 
Being once more releafed, fir William, in the begin¬ 
ning of 1747, went to the Eaft Indies as chief officer of 
one of the Eaft-India Company’s fliips, and performed 
two voyages in that ftation. In 1749, the Eaft-India 
Company appointed him to the command of a new fhip 
called the Guardian, equipped as a fhip of war; in her- 
he failed to Bombay, to proleft the trade on the Malabar 
coaft, which was much annoyed by the depredations of 
Angria, and other pirates, with which thofe leas fwarmed. 
During two years he was conftantly employed in convoy¬ 
ing the merchant-fhips from Bombay and Surat to the 
Red Sea, the Gulf of Perfia, and .up and down the Mala¬ 
bar coaft, from the Gulf of Cambay to Cape Comorin. 
He was frequently attacked on this fervice by the differ¬ 
ent piratical ftates. At one time, when he had nearfeventy 
fail of fliips and veffels under his charge, he was affailed 
by a large fleet of Angria’s frigates and gallivats, full of 
men. With the Guardian, Bombay grab, and Drake 
bomb-ketch, he engaged the enemy, and kept them in 
clofe aftion, whilft his fleet gotfafe into Tellicherry. In 
this conflift he funk one of the enemy’s largeft gallivats, 
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