Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/309

Allan  relating to the university of Oxford, made by the Rev. William Smith, rector of Melsonby.

About 1768 he set up a private press at the Grange, and from that time worked at it indefatigably, producing many valuable antiquarian and historical books and pamphlets, now very rare and valuable, of which it is scarcely possible to make a complete list. We know of the following, some without date:—1. ‘Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth. . . . Free Grammar School at Darlington,’ 1567. 2. ‘Inspeximus of the Surrender. . . . Monastery of St. Cuthbert at Durham,’ 1540. 3. ‘Foundation Charter of the Cathedral Church at Durham,’ 1541. 4. ‘Collections relating to St. Edmund's Hospital at Gatesheved, from 1247,’ 1769. 5. ‘Collections relating to the Hospital of Gretham from 1272,’ 1770. 6. ‘Collections relating to Sherburn Hospital, from 1181,’ 1771. 7. ‘Recommendatory Letter of Oliver Cromwell to William Lenthall, Esq., Speaker. . . . College and University of Durham.’ 8. ‘Letter from William Frankeleyn, Rector of Houghton-le-Spring, to Cardinal Wolseley,. . . Coal Mines at Whickham and the Cardinal's Mint.’ 9. ‘Address and Queries. . . compiling a complete Civil and Ecclesiastical History of the County Palatine of Durham,’ 1774. 10. ‘Antiquarian Tracts, selected from the Archæologia.’ 11. ‘A Sketch of the Life and Character of Bishop Trevor,’ 1776. 12. ‘The Legend of St. Cuthbert, by Robert Hegg, 1626,’ 1777. 13. ‘Origin and Succession of the Bishops of Durham,’ 1779. 14. ‘Hall's MS. Catalogue of Bishops, from the Dean and Chapter's Library.’

He also issued, as early as 1763, a prospectus for an elaborate copper-plate peerage in forty-two numbers, but finding the expense would reach some thousands of pounds he relinquished the scheme after publishing the first number. He also engraved several charters in facsimile and seals of bishops for his own and other works. He was so industrious in literary matters that for the mere love of typographical art he printed gratis some of the works, pamphlets, and poetical pieces of his friends. There are now existing seven works of Mr. Pennant's, done by him, some with the imprint, ‘Printed by the friendship of George Allan, Esq., at his private press at Darlington.’ He was so fond of transcribing that, shortly before his death, he copied a manuscript visitation by Dugdale, 2 vols, fol., and emblazoned the arms neatly. In short, ‘every day of his life he is said to have written almost a quire.’ His copy of Le Neve's ‘Fasti’ contained many thousands of corrections and additions when he offered it to Gutch for his edition of that work.

Allan was of a kindly nature, and the only shadow resting on the story of his life is a long-standing quarrel with his father, which continued until the death of the latter in 1789; but the literary correspondence of the time seems to imply that the fault was not with the son. He retired from the law in 1790, and died suddenly of a second paralytic stroke, 18 May 1800.

His great library and museum was sold under the will, and purchased by his son, George Allan, who with like liberality opened the collections to literary men. Amongst others indebted to them were Robert Surtees, in his ‘History and Antiquities of Durham,’ Sir Cuthbert Sharp, in his ‘History of Hartlepool,’ and John Nichols, for the materials which furnished the lives of Bishop Talbot and Mr. Hutchinson.

Excellent steel portraits of the subject of this memoir and his literary colleague, Hutchinson, seated in council in the Grange library, are given in vol. ix. of Nichols's ‘Literary Anecdotes.’

[Brit. Top. i. 332; Hutchinson's Durham; Nichols's Literary Anecdotes and Illustrations; Gent. Mag. lxx. 802, lxxxvi. pt. 2, 137; Surtees's History of Durham, iii. 371.]  ALLAN, PETER (1798–1849), remarkable for the excavations he made in the solid rock on the sea-coast near Sunderland, was born of Scottish peasants in 1798, either at Selkirk or at Tranent in Haddingtonshire. In early life he was in domestic service as a valet. Afterwards he became gamekeeper to the Marquis of Londonderry, and was reputed to be an unerring shot, and to possess unparalleled physical strength. At a later date he opened a tavern at Whitburn, a village on the coast of Durham. The acquisition of some small property near his inn drew his attention to the quarries in the neighbourhood; and he exhibited so much practical skill in works of excavation that several quarries were placed under his superintendence. About 1827 he formed an eccentric plan for colonising the wild rocks round the bay of Marsden, five miles to the south of Sunderland. After many months spent in carrying out his project, he removed thither in July 1828, with his wife, children, and parents, and resided there for the remainder of his life.

The Marsden rocks had already been known as a rendezvous of smugglers, and a passage had been perforated through them from the high land to the beach, but to all 