Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/140

  [Minutes of Fourth London Classis (now in Dr. William's Library); Blackmore Papers, Christian Reformer, 1851, p. 413, 1852, pp. 1, 218; cf. 1852, p. 609, 1858, pp. 529, 532; Calamy's Contin. i. 43; Sibree's Indep. in Warwickshire, 1855, pp. 44, 46; Davids' Ann. of Noncon. in Essex, 1863, pp. 443, 599.]  BLACKNER, JOHN (1770–1816), author of a history of Nottingham, was born at Ilkeston, Derbyshire, about 1770. After serving an apppenticeship to a stocking-maker in his native place, he migrated to Nottingham. He did not receive even the rudiments of education, but being possessed of strong natural abilities, a facility for making rhymes, and a readiness of speech, he became a great favourite with his associates. His ardent radical sympathies afterwards brought him into prominence as a leader of a section of local politicians, and he acquired such literary ability and reputation as to obtain in 1812 the editorship of the radical daily paper ‘The Statesman,’ published in London. Through failure of health he held this post only a short time. Soon afterwards he took the editorship of the ‘Nottingham Review.' He published several pamphlets, including one in 1805 on the ‘Utility of Commerce,' and in 1815 he issued his ‘History of Nottingham’ (4to, pp. 459), a work which displays much industry and research, though later writers complain of its bombast and party spleen. He was the landlord for some years of the Rancliffe Arms, Sussex Street, Nottingham, and died there on 22 Dec. 1816, in his forty-seventh year.

 BLACKRIE, ALEXANDER (d. 1772), apothecary, was a native of Scotland, and for nearly forty years carried on his business at Bromley, Kent, where he died 29 May 1772. In October 1763 he contributed a letter to the ‘Scots Magazine,' in which he exposed the secret of Dr. Chittick's cure for gravel. This letter was expanded into a volume, and published in 1760 under the title, ‘A Disquisition on Medicines which dissolve the Stone; in which Dr. Chittick's Secret is considered and discovered.' A second edition, enlarged and improved, appeared in 1771.

 BLACKSTONE, JOHN (d. 1753), botanist, was a London apothecary. He published ‘Fasciculus Plantarum circa Harefield (Middlesex) sponte nascentium,' London, 1737; ‘Plantæ rariores Angliæ,' London, 1737; ‘Specimen Botanicum quo Plantarum plurium rariorum Angliæ indigenarum loci naturales illustrantur,’ London, 1746, to which a number of other botanists contributed. In it several species were added to the British flora. The author intended to publish a second volume of the ‘Specimen,' for which he had collected materials, but he died in 1753 before its completion.

 BLACKSTONE or BLAXTON, WILLIAM (d. 1675), one of the earliest episcopal clergymen resident in New England) as distinguished from the puritan founders of New England, must, according to the records of Massachusetts, have arrived in the colony between 1620 and 1630. In the ‘Literary Diary’ of President Stiles he is called ‘an episcopal clergyman’-his name being variantly spelled Blackstone, Blackston, and Blaxton. He was found by the Massachusetts Bay colony, on their arrival in 1630, settled on the peninsula of Shawmut, where the city of Boston now stands. He had had a pleasant cottage built and a garden planted. Difficulties beset him with the newcomers. As a consequence he sold his property and removed to the more tolerant colony of Roger Williams in 1631, observing that ‘he had left England to escape the power of the lord bishops, but he found himself in the hands of the Lord’s brethren.’ According to Stiles’s ‘Diary’ he ‘removed to Blaxton river, and settled six miles north of Providence.’ Elsewhere in the same diary we learn that he was ‘a great student with a large library,’ that he ‘rode a bull for want of a horse,’ and ‘preached occasionally,’ and that his home and library were burnt in King Philip's war. He married, 4 July 1659, widow Sarah Stephenson, who died in June 1673. Blackstone died 26 May 1675. ‘He was buried,’ says the ‘Massachusetts Historical Collections’ (2nd series, x. 710), ‘in classic ground, on Study Hill, where it is said a white stone marks his grave.’ President Stiles visited his grave in 1771, and left a careful map of the whole region, marking the homes of Blackstone, Roger Williams, and Samuel Gorton, the patriarchs of New England (local) history. The high ground on which his second New England home was built-about six miles from Providence-still bears the name of ‘Study Hill,’ because it was on this hill that Blackstone pursued his studies which gave him a wide reputation. The Blackstone river (formerly Pawtucket) and the Blackstone canal also preserve his name. 