Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/141

 Edinburgh. Representative works by him are in the public galleries at Liverpool, Manchester, Oldham, and Bolton. He was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy, London, and also at Glasgow and other Scottish exhibitions. In his later years he adopted a more glowing scheme of colour than in his earlier work; but his pictures were always noticeable for their realistic line and tone, and for their technical excellence. Beattie-Brown died at Edinburgh on 31 March 1909.

By his wife Esther Love Doig, he had three sons and six daughters. The eldest son, H. W. Jennings Brown (1862-1898), showed promise as a portrait and figure-painter.

 BECKETT, EDMUND, first  (1816–1905), lawyer, mechanician and controversialist, born at Carlton Hall, near Newark, on 12 May 1816, was eldest son of Sir Edmund Beckett, fourth baronet (1787–1874), who assumed the additional surname of Denison by royal letters patent in 1816 and resumed his original surname by the same process on succeeding to the baronetcy in 1872. The elder Sir Edmund was conservative M.P. for the West Riding in 1841 and again from 1848 to 1859. Beckett's mother, who died on 27 March 1874, was Maria, daughter of William Beverley of Beverley, and great-niece and heiress of Anne, daughter of Roundell Smithson of Millfield, near Harewood, and widow of Sir Thomas Denison, judge of the king's bench.

Educated at Doncaster grammar school, Eton, and Trinity College, Cambridge, Beckett Denison graduated B.A. as thirtieth wrangler in 1838 (M.A. 1841, LL.D. 1863). He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1841, became a Q.C. in 1854, a bencher of his inn in the same year, and its treasurer in 1876. He soon acquired a large practice, chiefly in connection with railway bills, becoming famous for his severe cross-examination and retentive memory. Advancing rapidly in his profession, Beckett Denison had by 1860 become recognised as the leader of the parliamentary bar, though his powers of sarcasm and assertive manner stood him in better stead with committees and rival counsel than his knowledge of law. He was very tenacious of the rights of the inns of court, and strongly resented any attempt to interfere with them. Keeping a keen eye on his fees, he accumulated a large fortune. He ceased to practise regularly after 1880, though he still accepted an occasional brief. Succeeding his father in the baronetcy on 24 May 1874, Beckett Denison followed his example by discarding the second surname. As Sir Edmund Beckett he was appointed chancellor and vicar-general of the province of York in 1877, an office which he held until 1900. Beckett was created a peer by the title of Baron Grimthorpe of Grimthorpe, Yorkshire, on 17 Feb. 1886, with remainder to the issue male of his father.

Meanwhile Grimthorpe showed an exceptional versatility of interest in matters outside the law, and conducted numerous controversies on ecclesiastical, architectural, scientific, and other topics with vigour and acrimony. His earliest energies were engaged in theological warfare. In 1848 he published ‘Six Letters on Dr. Todd's Discourses on the Prophecies relating to the Apocalypse,’ a strenuous polemic. The controversy on marriage with a deceased wife's sister then engaged his attention, and between 1849 and 1851 he produced four pamphlets in favour of that cause, the most important of which was ‘A Short Letter on the Bishop of Exeter's [Dr. Phillpotts'] Speech on the Marriage Bill.’ To the end of his life he supported a measure of relief.

As chancellor of York he became the attached friend of the archbishop, William Thomson [q. v.], but did not hesitate to criticise episcopal proceedings with freedom, when he disagreed with them. A strong advocate of reform in church discipline, he gave evidence before the royal commission of 1883, and drafted a disciplinary bill of his own with racy notes, which he sent to the commissioners. There followed an outspoken ‘Letter to the Archbishop of York on the Report of the Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts.’ Together with Dean Burgon [q. v. Suppl. I], he took exception to the revised version of the New Testament, publishing in 1882 ‘Should the Revised New Testament be Authorised?’ and a rejoinder to Dr. Farrar's answer to that criticism [see, Suppl. II]. Much alarmed by the spread of ritualism in the Church of England, he became president of the Protestant Churchmen's Alliance, which held its inaugural meeting in Exeter Hall in 1889. The Lincoln judgment of 1890 [see, Suppl. II] stirred him to write what Archbishop Benson called a ‘furious letter,’ entitled ‘A Review of the Lambeth Judgment in Read v. the Bishop of