Page:A catalogue of notable Middle Templars, with brief biographical notices.djvu/275

 Armada, on which he himself served as a volunteer. He afterwards fitted out other privateers, which caused him to be described in a letter to the King of Spain as "the greatest pirate that had been in this kingdom." It was for these patriotic services, no doubt, that he was admitted to the Inn, together with (q. v.). He was Sheriff of London in the year following his admission. He was knighted in 1603 and became Lord Mayor in 1607. He died in 1616.

Admitted 18 December, 1727.

Second son of Daniel Webb of Devizes. He first practised as a Solicitor and acquired a great reputation for a knowledge of records and precedents of Constitutional law, and his services were of great assistance in the trial of the Jacobite prisoners in 1745. In 1741 he became a member of Lincoln's Inn. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1747. He entered Parliament in 1754 and became Solicitor to the Treasury, in which capacity he assisted in the prosecution of John Wilkes, which brought him into great odium with the popular party. He died at his seat at Busbridge, Surrey, 22 June, 1770.

He was an industrious collector of antiquarian literature, and many of his MSS. are now in the British Museum. In 1763 he printed a collection of General Warrants copied from the Records, and amongst his other publications are treatises on Domesday, Danegeld, and the political status of Jews in England.

Admitted 6 July, 1840.

Eldest son of Rev. Thomas Webster of Oakington, Cambridge. He was educated at Charterhouse and Cambridge, where he was Fourteenth Wrangler in 1832. He was admitted to the Middle Temple from Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the Bar 3 May, 1841. He obtained a large parliamentary practice, and became a great authority on patent law, his Reports and Notes of Cases on Letters Patent for Inventions, published in 1844, becoming a chief text-book on the subject. He was engaged as Counsel in the great Liverpool and Mersey Docks Case, his reports of which, and his handbook on The Ports and Docks of Birkenhead are the standard works of reference on the subject of the Mersey. He took silk in 1865, and died 3 June, 1875. He was the father of Sir Richard Everard Webster, the present Lord Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice.

Admitted 2 March, 1840.

Only son of Oswald Weir of Mount Hamilton, Ayr, where he was born in 1802. He was educated at Ayr Academy, and subsequently at the University of Göttingen. He was called to the Scottish Bar in 1827, but, taking to journalism, became Editor of the Glagow Argus (1858), and removing to London, joined the staff of the Daily News at its foundation in 1846, and