Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/406

 this edition the word ‘execrable’ was omitted from the title, and some documents not previously printed were given in an appendix to the volume.

 BORLASE, HENRY (1806–1835), separatist clergyman, born at Helstone, Cornwall, on 15 Feb. 1806, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1828. After taking orders, he became curate at St. Keyne, near Liskeard, about December 1830. At the end of 1832 he resigned his curacy and withdrew from the established church. Taking up his residence in Plymouth, he joined a society, formed in 1831–2, which had received the name of Plymouth Brethren, a movement which has since assumed larger proportions, and developed many remarkable peculiarities. He has been spoken of as its founder, but this is incorrect; he was a great friend of Benjamin Newton, one of the originators of the society. Borlase considered that the established church, as a human institution, had fallen into apostasy, and that separation from apostasy was no schism. In 1834 he began the publication at Plymouth of a quarterly organ, the 'Christian Witness,’ which continued to exist till 1840. At the beginning of 1834 he broke a blood-vessel, and was subsequently in very precarious health. He died on 13 Nov. 1835, at Plymstock, near Plymouth. He married Caroline Pridham. His contributions to the ‘Christian Witness’ were included in a small publication, without date, ‘Papers by the late Henry Borlase, connected with the Present State of the Church.' Some biographical particulars are added by the anonymous editor.

 BORLASE, JOHN (d. 1649), soldier, was bred a soldier in the wars of the Low Countries, where he served with distinction before the truce in 1608. He also served in Sir Horace Vere's expedition to the Palatinate in 1620 (, i. 15), and is mentioned as one of the commanders of the 6,000 English who were serving in the United Provinces in 1626 (, i. 421). In 1633 he was appointed master of the ordinance in Ireland, apparently on the recommendation of Stratford, who had a high opinion of him ( Correspondence, i. 113–197, ii. 108–204). Lord Dillon and Sir William Parsons were appointed lords justices in 1640, but Dillon being considered dangerous as the brother-in-law of Strafford, Borlase was appointed in his room, ‘by the importunity of the Irish committee then at court’ (, iii. 564). This post he seems to have been unfit to fill, for though a good soldier, he understood nothing else, and had now grown old and indolent. As lord justice he gave himself very little trouble about the exercise of his authority, and left all to his colleague, Sir William Parsons ( Life of Ormonde, bk. iii. 66). Sir John Temple, however, gives a much more favourable account of Borlase's government (History of the Irish Rebellion, p. 13). In April 1643 Sir Henry Tichborne became Borlase's colleague in place of Parsons, and nine months later (21 Jan. 1644) both were superseded by the appointment of the Marquis of Ormonde as lord-lieutenant. Borlase continued to hold the post of muster of the ordnance till his death in the spring of 1649. In the ‘Journals’ of the House of Commons for 17 March 1649 he is spoken of as lately deceased. His estate had so suffered during the rebellion that Lady Borlase was obliged to apply to parliament for money to defray her husband's funeral and for her own support (Journals, 13 June 1649; see also the subsequent petitions of his family in the Domestic State Papers of the Commonwealth).

 BORLASE, WILLIAM (1695–1772), antiquary, descended, it is said, from a Norman family, who settled in the parish of St. Wenn, Cornwall, where they adopted the Cornish name of their place of residence ( MSS.) Pendeen, near St. Just, became their chief abode about the middle of the seventeenth century; and the Borlases took the royalist side in the civil war. William Borlase, the second son of John Borlase, M.P. for St. Ives in Cornwall, and Lydia Harris, his wife, of Hayne, Devonshire, a descendant of the Nevilles and Bouchiers, was born on 2 Feb. 1695 (Quarterly Review, cxxxix. 367). First educated at a school in Penzance, he was removed thence to Plymouth in 1709, and placed under a