of St. Paul's in 1782. In 1783 he was presented to the vicarage of Heybridge, near Maldon, and in 1788 to the vicarage of Little Wakering. Both these Essex livings he resigned in 1797, on his presentation to the vicarage of Caddington, Bedfordshire, where he resided in the summer season, and rebuilt the parsonage. In 1795 he was appointed one of the Priests of the Chapels Royal, and also a Minor Canon of Westminster. From 1783 Mr. Pridden was for 20 years the diligent curate of St. Bride's, Fleet Street; so that, with his Cathedral duties, few men were more constantly employed. In 1812 he was presented to his last and best preferment, the rectory of St. George, Botolph Lane. In the performance of his clerical duties he was energetic and impressive, and in the service of the choir modulated his voice with skill. Mr. Pridden had a considerable knowledge and natural taste for architecture and civil engineering. He formed a design for uniting the tops of Holborn Hill and Snow Hill by a handsome Bridge, for which he was thanked by the Corporation of London. In 1811 he projected a new method for the more effectual drainage of the Fens, called the Bedford Level. (Gent. Mag. 1811, i. 231.) He was the first honorary secretary of the General Sea Bathing Infirmary at Margate. (See Gent. Mag. 1797, p. 841.) He contributed a History of Reculver and Herne to the "Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica," 1787; some curious extracts from the registers of Heybridge to the "Illustrations of the Manners and Expenses of Antient Times," 1797; and drawings of churches and other communications to Mr. Nichols's laborious History of Leicestershire." In 1803 he printed a Sermon preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Charity Children at St. Paul's Cathedral. (See Gent. Mag. 1803, p. 450.) In 1794 Mr. Pridden entered into an engagement with the Rev. Dr. Strachey (who had originally undertaken the task by direction of the House of Lords) to form an ample epitome or Index of the Rolls of Parliament. This laborious task Mr. Pridden executed in so minute and voluminous a manner that it occupied the last 30 years of his life, broke down his health, and embittered his existence.* Mr. Pridden was twice married: 1. to Anne, eldest daughter of John Nichols, Esq. F.S.A.; she died in 1815: 2. to Anne, eldest dau. of Mr. Deputy Pickwoad; she died in 1847. He hah no children. He died April 5, 1825, in his 68th year, and was buried in the grave of his first wife, in Islington church-yard.† P. 288, note. John Davidson, esq. of Hall Trees, writer to the Signet, and deputy keeper of the Signets, died at Edinburgh December 29, 1797. *The Index of the Rolls was finally published under the supervision of Mr. Upham, and consists of a very large folio volume. Mr. Upham undertook the work in 1825, which he completed in 1832, and died Jan. 24, 1834. See memoir of him in Gent. Mag. 1834, i. 336. A fuller account of Mr. Pridden will be found in the Gent. Mag. for May, 1825. P. 312, note, omit " VIII. 312," and add " Index, VIII. p. 71.” P. 318. Dr. Hales died January 30, 1831. P. 326, note. The Rev. John David Haslewood was preacher of Bedford and Margaret Street Chapels, Westminster. His style of preaching is criticised and approved of in the European Magazine for April, 1823, p. 327. P. 330. Mrs. Jane West died at Little Bowden, near Market Harborough, at the venerable age of 93, March 25, 1852. In the letter to Bishop Percy, printed in pp. 329-331, she details the circumstances of her birth, and early studies; and many other particulars of her were noticed in the Lit. Illust., see General Index, vol. VIII. p. 116; and the notice of her, vol. VII. p. 88. She married about the year 1780 Mr. Thomas West, a yeoman farmer, at Little Bowden, a relative of Admiral West, and of Gilbert West, author of the Treatise on the Resurrection, and whose maternal ancestors constituted an unbroken chain of rectors of Little Bowden for above 150 years. Mr. West died in 1823, in his 67th year. In Dec. 1821, Mrs. West lost her youngest son Edward. Thomas, the elder, (to whom she addressed her "Letters to a Young Man,") died at Northampton, April 10, 1843, aged 59. Mrs. West's writings attained considerable celebrity at the early part of the present century. A list of her works may be seen in the Gent. Mag. for July, 1852, p. 106. They consist of eighteen different publications; and were commended by Bishop Percy, Dr. Robert Anderson of Edinburgh, and by Archdeacon Nares (see the Letters in Lit. Illust. vols. VII. and VIII.) A memoir of Mrs. West is given in Gent. Mag. July, 1852, pp. 99-101. P. 346, note, on Mr. Rodd, read thus: for "now," read "afterwards a highly respectable bookseller in Great Newport-street." For the following excellent memoirs of the two booksellers Thomas Rodd, father and son, I am indebted to Mr. Horatio Rodd, the younger son of Mr. T. Rodd, senior; who also presented me with the private engraving of his father which accompanies the memoir. "Mr. Thomas Rodd was a bookseller in Great Newport-street. He was the son of Charles Rodd of Liverpool, and of Alicant in Spain; was born in Bow-street, Covent Garden, in the house formerly inhabited by Justice Fielding,* next the police-office; was educated at the Charter House, under Dr. Berdmore, and finished his education at St. Quentin's in France. He afterwards resided three years in his father's counting-house at Alicant, where he imbibed his taste for Spanish literature. On his returu to England he at first chiefly resided with his uncles, the Rev. E. Rouse, Rector of Welwyn,† Herts, and the Rev. W. Rouse, *Justice Fielding was very fond of cards, and Mr. Rodd, by sorting the cards for the Justice (who, be it remembered, was, as Justice is depicted, blind), imbibed a love of cards, not from a propensity of gambling, which lasted him during life. "I have heard him say, on these visits he usually slept in the bedroom where Young the poet, Rector of Welwyn, used to sleep."-M. R. * Rector of Clophill, Bedfordshire. It was whilst on a visit to his uncle E. Rouse, at Welwyn, that Mr. Rodd met with his first wife Elizabeth Inskip, sister of the poet of that name, the intimate acquaintance of the poet Bloomfield, and who still resides in the same town (Shefford) where lived 'The Farmer's Boy.' The mother of his wife was a Miss Handscomb, whose family had been for many generations opulent farmers at Clifton, Beds. "Thomas Rodd, the father, was originally a gentleman of small fortune, and it was always his wish to enter the Church.† He sold his property at St. Lawrence Waltham, and with a large portion of the proceeds he purchased the secret of making imitation diamonds, rubies, garnets, amethysts, and every sort of precious stone, which business he commenced first at Sheffield in 1804-5, and afterwards he carried it on at London with considerable success, and to such an exquisite perfection had he brought it, that on two or three occasions stones of great value were brought to him to imitate. Mons. Francillon, a diamond merchant, brought him a very large black diamond, and a splendid emerald that was taken out of the hilt of Tippoo Saib's sword; after a few attempts the tints of both these stones were imitated to the satisfaction of Mons. Francillon, whose judgment was much relied on. About 1809, having collected a large quantity of books, and thinking he could carry on the trade of a bookseller as well as make his glass, he commenced by taking a shop in Great Newportstreet, where he published a catalogue of about 2,000 numbers. This business increased so much as somewhat to interfere with the time of his son Thomas, whose almost constant care and attention were required at the furnace. When the act of Parliament was passed relative to the melting of glass, the whole of Mr. Rodd's stock of that material being seized upon by the officers of the Crown, for infringing a law he did not know to be in existence, he petitioned the Lords of the Treasury, and the fine was remitted. The act compelled all persons melting glass to take out a licence and pay for it 201. per annum, also to pay a duty of 10d. per lb. for every pound melted, good or bad. The continual annoyance of the Excise at length compelled Mr. Rodd to give up the business, and attend only to the book trade, whilst numerous families, working goldsmiths, lapidaries, jewellers, and beadmakers were * Bloomfield was buried not at Shefford, but in the neighbouring churchyard of Campton, where his gravestone, near the north-east angle of the chancel, was thus inscribed at the expense of the Ven. Henry Kaye Bonney, Archdeacon of Bedford: "Here lie the remains of ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. He was born at Honington in Suffolk, December 3, 1776, and died at Shefford, August 19, 1823. Let his wild native wood-notes tell the rest." + His writings breathe the essence of piety; he was truly orthodox and a strict-going Churchman. His facility of writing sermons was so great, that a clergyman has been known to come into his shop and ask for a sermon on a particular text which he had not got, and be supplied by Mr. Rodd for a guinea, as it was urged by the divine that he had not got time. There is part of a sermon still extant that he sat up in his bed the last night he lived to write, taken from Exodus, chap. xx. verses 1 and 2. He also composed a prayer the night before his death. |