Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/218

 and ready to help others at any inconvenience to himself.

 BLEGBOROUGH, RALPH (1769–1827), physician, was the son of a surgeon at Richmond, Yorkshire, where he was born on 8 April 1769. He was educated at the grammar school of his native town, and, after acting for some time as apprentice to his father, continued his medical studies first at the university of Edinburgh, and then at Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals, London. Having become a member of the corporation of surgeons, London, he commenced in London as a general practitioner. He became M.D. of the university of Aberdeen on 29 Dec. 1804, and was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 30 Sept. 1806. About 1804 he entered into partnership with Dr. Walshman, a practitioner in midwifery, and henceforth devoted himself exclusively to this branch of his profession, in which his reputation became so high that he was selected as a medical witness before the committee of the House of Peers upon the question of the Gardner peerage. He devoted a large proportion of his time to gratuitous practice among the poor, and died, literally worn out by his benevolent exertions, on 23 Jan. 1827. Dr. Blegborough contributed several papers to the medical journals, and also published separately 'Two Articles on the Air Pump, extracted from the "Medical and Physical Journal,"' 1802; 'Facts and Observations respecting the Efficiency of the Air Pump and Vapour Bath in Gout and other Diseases,' 1803; and 'Address to the Governors of the Surrey Dispensary,' 1810.

 BLENCOW or BLINCOW, JOHN (fl. 1640), divine, the son of John Blencow, of London, was born 29 Jan. 1608-9, entered Merchant Taylors' School in 1620, and proceeded to St.John's College, Oxford, in 1627, when he was elected to a fellowship. He graduated B.C.L. 25 June 1633. One Blincow, fellow of New college, was expelled from his fellowship by the parliamentary visitors in 1648, on the ground that he had taken up arms for the king, was 'dangerous, and absent.' Blencow was the author of a very curious sermon, and, Wood adds, 'perhaps other things.' The sermon, delivered at St. Paul's, and inscribed to Sir Henry Martin, is entitled 'Michael's Combat with the Divel; or, Moses his Funerall' (1640).

 BLENCOWE, JOHN (1642–1720), judge, was born in 1642 at the manor of Marston St. Lawrence, on the Oxfordshire border of Northamptonshire. The family came originally from Greystock, in Cumberland, but this estate was granted to one Thomas Blencowe in the time of Henry VI. Fifth in descent from him was Thomas, father of John Blencowe, who married as his second wife Anne, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Francis Savage of Ripple in Worcestershire. John was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, with which his family was connected. A Blencowe was an early benefactor of the college, and Anthony Blencowe, D.C.L., was provost from 1572 to 1617. He was entered a student of the Inner Temple in 1663, called to the bar 1673, elected a master of the bench in 1687, received the degree of serjeant-at-law 11 April 1689, and represented Brackley in Northamptonshire for five years in the parliament of 1690, being a firm adherent of the government. He married Anne, eldest daughter of Dr. John Wallis, Savilian professor of geometry in Oxford. To this marriage Blencowe in part owed his advancement ; for when the deanery (or bishopric, according to Granger) of Hereford was offered to Dr. Wallis he declined it, and asked a favour for his son-in-law, saying, 'I have a son-in-law, Mr. Serjeant Blencowe, of the Inner Temple, a member of parliament, an able lawyer, and not inferior to many of those on the bench, of a good life and great integrity, cordial to the government, and serviceable to it.' Accordingly, on 17 Sept. 1696, Blencowe was raised to the bench as a baron of the exchequer, in the room of Sir John Turton. He was removed to the king's bench on 18 Jan. 1697, and knighted and transferred to the common pleas 20 Nov. 1714. Although Baker, Noble, and others speak of him as in the queen's bench from 1702 to 1714, and Luttrell (v. 183) savs it was intended to remove him at the beginning of Queen Anne's reign, still Lord Raymond's law reports never speak of him as sitting in the queen's bench, but speak of him as in the common pleas, both at Anne's accession and George I's (, 769, 1317). He may then have passed directly from the exchequer to the common pleas. In 1718 he is concurring with other judges in favour of the king's prerogative to control the marriage and education of the royal family. He retired on a pension on 22 June 1722 at the 