Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/106

 George Armstrong, saved his life by turning informer.

Armstrong is also the hero of an English ballad and chap-book. These make him to have lived at Giltnock Hall, in Westmoreland, where he entertained eight score followers. After the the king summoned him to Edinburgh under the pretence of conferring honour upon him. Coming, bravely attended, into the king's presence, he was denounced as a traitor. A desperate fight ensued, in which the streets of the city ran with blood; but at length Armstrong and his men were slain by the king's guards, a page alone escaping to take the news to the widow. The chap-book prefaces the narrative by an account of Armstrong's youthful adventures in the Holy Land.

The Scotch ballad was first published by Allan Ramsay in his 'Evergreen,' who says he took it down from the mouth of a gentleman called Armstrong, of the sixth generation from John. It bears every mark of a high antiquity. The English ballad, which no doubt belongs to the middle of the seventeenth century, is preserved among the 'Bagford' and 'Roxburghe Ballads,' and has been published by Ritson and others. There are several editions of the chap-book, which seems to have been composed early in the last century.

 ARMSTRONG, JOHN, F.R.S. (1673–1742), became major-general and quartermaster-general of the forces, colonel of the royal regiment of foot in Ireland, surveyor-general of the ordnance and his majesty's chief engineer, and was elected fellow of the Royal Society on 2 May 1723. He appears to be the person who, as 'Colonel John Armstrong, Chief Engineer of England,' was the author of part of a work entitled a 'Report with Proposals for draining the Fens and amending the Port of King's Lynn and of Cambridge and the rest of the trading towns in those parts and the navigable rivers that have their course through the great level of the Fens called Bedford Level.' In 'Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica' the authorship of the whole work is ascribed to Colonel John Armstrong, but it is evident that the compiler of the 'Proposals for draining the Fens' was Thomas Badesdale, and that Colonel Armstrong was only the author of the 'Report.'

 ARMSTRONG, JOHN, M.D. (1709–1779), poet, physician, and essayist, was born in the parish of Castleton, Roxburghshire, about the year 1709. His father was a clergyman. He studied at Edinburgh University, and took his degree of M.D. on 4 Feb. 1732, composing for the occasion a 'Dissertatio de Tabe Purulenta,' which he published at Edinburgh in the same year, with a dedication to Sir Hans Sloane. A Latin letter which the author sent to Sir Hans Sloane with a copy of the thesis is preserved in the British Museum (MS. Sloane, 4036). Before 1735 Armstrong was practising medicine in London.

At an early age Armstrong began to cultivate poetry. He tells us that the verses entitled 'Winter' (an 'imitation of Shakespeare'), first published in 1770, were written in 1725. Thomson, Mallet, Aaron Hill, and Young received manuscript copies of the verses from the youthful writer, and expressed to him their congratulations. Mallet promised to print the piece, but afterwards changed his mind.

In 1734 Armstrong published, in vol. ii. of the 'Edinburgh Medical Essays,' an essay on 'Penetrating Topic Medicines;' and in the same year he wrote a paper (read before the Royal Society on 30 Jan. 1735, and preserved among the Sloane MSS., No. 4433) on the 'Alcalescent Disposition of Animal Fluids.' His next production was a satirical pamphlet entitled 'Essay for abridging the Study of Physick,' 1735, 8vo. In the following year he made his first appearance as a poet. The 'Œconomy of Love,' 1736, 8vo, was published anonymously; and it is indeed a production which not many men would care to claim. A more nauseous piece of work could not easily be found. When the author reissued the poem in 1768, he had the good sense to cancel some of the worst passages. It was followed by a 'Synopsis of the History and Cure of Venereal Diseases.' In 1741 Armstrong solicited Dr. Birch's recommendation to Dr. Mead for the appointment of physician to the troops going to the West Indies (Sloane MS. 4300).

Writing many years afterwards, in 1773, he ascribes his limited success in his profession to the fact that 'he could neither tell a heap of lies in his own praise wherever he went; nor intrigue with nurses; nor associate, much less assimilate, with the