Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/77

 Arbuthnot of exercising the Trade and Mystery of Upholders against part of the Bill for viewing and examining Drugs and Medicines;' the 'Petition of the Colliers, Cooks, Blacksmiths, &c., against Catoptrical Victuallers;' and 'It cannot rain but it pours, or London strewed with rarities,' generally printed in Swift's works. They first appeared in the additional volume of 'Miscellanies' published by Pope in 1732, together with an 'Essay of the learned Martinus Scriblerus concerning the Origin of Sciences' (which is traced to the monkeys of Ethiopia) attributed to Arbuthnot and Pope himself by Pope (, 167). He may have contributed in some degree to the treatise on the Bathos, which seems, however, to have been almost entirely Pope's.

The 'History of John Bull' originally appeared in 1712, in successive parts, entitled 'Law is a Bottomless Pit, exemplified in the case of Lord Strutt, John Bull, Nicholas Frog, and Lewis Baboon, who spent all they had in a lawsuit;' 'John Bull in his Senses,' being the second part of the above; 'John Bull still in his Senses,' the third part; 'Appendix to John Bull still in his Senses;' and 'Lewis Baboon turned honest and John Bull politician,' being the fourth part. They are described on the title-page as written by the author of the 'New Atalantis.' The history was reprinted in Pope's 'Miscellanies' (1727), rearranged and divided into two parts.

[Life in Miscellaneous Works, 1770; Biographia Britannica; Works of Swift and Pope, passim; Spence's Anecdotes; Chesterfield's Works, 1845, ii. 446; Retrospective Review, vol. viii.; Munk's College of Physicians (1878), ii. 27.]  ARBUTHNOT, MARRIOT (1711?–1794), admiral, was a native of Weymouth. About his birth, parentage, and early years, nothing is certainly known. It has been supposed that he was related to Dr. John Arbuthnot, but apparently on no stronger grounds than the similarity of name; and the fact that up to 1763 he always wrote it Arbuthnott, as the family of Viscount Arbuthnott still does, may perhaps suggest a nearer connection with that stem. He did not attain the rank of lieutenant till 1739, when he was twenty-eight years of age. In 1746 he was made a commander, and in 1747 a captain. In 1759 he commanded the Portland, one of the ships employed under Commodore Duff in the blockade of Quiberon Bay, and was present at the total defeat of the French on 20 Nov. From 1771 to 1773 he commanded the guardship at Portsmouth, and in 1775 was appointed commissioner of the navy at Halifax; but he was recalled in January 1778 on his advancement to flag rank. He reached home in September, and in the following spring, after sitting as a member of the court-martial on Admiral Keppel, he was appointed to the command of the North American station, for which he sailed in the Europe of 64 guns on 1 May. He reached New York on 25 August. Here he remained through the autumn and winter, for some time expecting the attack of the Count d'Estaing, which however broke without much harm on Savannah. Afterwards, in concert with Sir Henry Clinton, he undertook the expedition against Charlestown, which surrendered without further resistance, when the passage into the harbour had been forced by the fleet. On 10 July 1780 a squadron of seven ships of the line and four heavy frigates, with a body of 6,000 soldiers newly arrived from France, captured Rhode Island, and Arbuthnot, reinforced at the same time and with a squadron now numbering nine ships of the line, took up his station in Gardiner's Bay at the north end of Long Island, whence he could keep watch on the enemy. He was still here at the latter end of September, when he unexpectedly received a letter from Sir George Rodney, acquainting him that he had arrived at Sandy Hook and taken on himself the command of the station. Sir George was at this time the commander-in-chief at the Leeward Islands, and having reason to believe that the Count de Guichen, the French admiral, had brought his fleet on to the coast of North America, had also come with ten ships of the line. Arbuthnot resented this supersession, and expressed himself upon it with much temper and insolence, Rodney submitted the whole matter to the admiralty. The admiralty approved Rodney's view, and Arbuthnot, nettled by the implied censure, requested, on the plea of ill-health, that he might be relieved from the command which had again devolved on him, since Rodney had gone back to the West Indies as soon as he knew that Guichen had certainly returned to France.

Through the first two months of 1781 the French and English squadrons lay opposed to each other at Rhode Island and Gardiner's Bay. It was only with the beginning of March that M. Destouches, the French senior officer, was persuaded by Washington to attempt a movement against the Englisli positions at the mouth of the Chesapeake. The time was well chosen, for one of the English ships had been wrecked a few weeks before, and another dismasted [see ]. Arbuthnot, however, got to sea very shortly after Destouches, and on the morning of 16 March, beingthen some forty miles to the eastward of Cape Henry, the French squadron VOL. II.