Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/363

 Altham had three children, a son Richard, who died without issue; two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary. Elizabeth married first Sir Francis Astley of Hill Morton and Melton, knight, then Robert Baron Digby (Irish peerage), and lastly Sir John Bernard, knight and baronet, serjeant-at-law. By his third wife Altham had no children.



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ALVES, ROBERT (1745–94), Scotch poet and prose writer, was born at Elgin on 11 Dec 1745. His father's circumstances were humble, but as a boy of promise he was placed at the Elgin grammar school, where he made such good use of his opportunities that when sent to Aberdeen he took at Marischal College the highest bursary of the year in which he competed. An ‘Elegy on Time,’ written while he was at Aberdeen, procured him the friendship of Br. Beattie, then one of the professors of Marischal College. On leaving Aberdeen Alves was successively master of a Banffshire parish school and tutor in the family of a gentleman who offered him a living in the Kirk of Scotland. But he preferred the head-mastership, with a lower stipend, of the Banff grammar school, which he held from 1773 until 1779, when, on the failure of his suit to a young lady of beauty and fortune, he migrated to Edinburgh. There he taught the classics and several modern languages, occasionally translating and compiling for the Edinburgh booksellers. In 1780 appeared his ‘Ode to Britannia ... on occasion of our late successes,’ in which the gallantry of Scotch officers during the campaign in the Carolinas against the revolted American colonists was sung with patriotic enthusiasm. In 1782 he published a volume of ‘Poems,’ and in 1789 ‘Edinburgh, a poem in two parts,’ a lively performance describing the topography and social aspects of the Scottish capital, together with the ‘Weeping Bard, a poem in sixteen cantos,’ much of which is plaintively auto-biographical. Alves died suddenly on 1 June 1794, while seeing through the press the work which appeared in the same year as ‘Sketches of the History of Literature, containing Lives and Characters of the most eminent Writers in different languages, ancient and modern, and critical remarks on their works. Together with several Literary Essays.’ The volume displays acuteness and a reading creditably wide, but neither the powers nor the attainments of the writer were sufficient for the task which he had undertaken. Lord Gardenstone, a literary Scotch judge, seems to have superintended its issue from the press, and he contributed to it several critical observations.



ALVEY, RICHARD (d. 1584), master of the Temple, received his education at Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1529–30, and M.A. in 1533. He was admitted a fellow of St. John's College in 1537 or 1538 during the prefecture of Dr. George Day. On 24 Feb. 1539–40 he was presented by his college to the rectory of Thorington in Essex. He proceeded B.D. in 1543, was admitted to the rectory of Grinstead, near Colchester, on the king's presentation, 11 May 1546, and to the rectory of Sandon, also in Essex, on the presentation of Sir John Gate, 13 Nov. 1548. On 11 Dec. 1552 he was installed canon of Westminster.

Early in the reign of Queen Mary he was deprived of all his preferments, whereupon he went into exile, residing at Frankfort till after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, when he returned to England and was restored to the rectory of Thorington. By letters-patent dated 13 Feb. 1559–60 he was appointed master of the Temple, and he was again constituted one of the canons of the church of Westminster by the charter of refoundation, 21 June 1560. In 1565 he resigned the rectory of Thorington. Dr. Sandys, Bishop of London, collated him to the rectory of Bursted Parva, Essex, on 10 April 1571. He resigned his canonry at Westminster in 1575, and the rectory of Bursted Parva in the following year. His death occurred about August 1584.

Isaak Walton (Life of Hooker, 1665, p. 45) describes him as ‘a man of a strict life, of