Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/154

 as they could get, to assist at Derby. The attempt failing, he and some of his friends were placed for a while under strict surveillance by the parliament. At the Restoration Crompton was forced to give up his rectory, though a certificate testifying his worth and loyalty was signed by many influential inhabitants of Derby and adjacent places. He then retired to Arnold, a small vicarage near Nottingham, from which he was soon ejected by the Act of Uniformity. He continued, however, to rent the vicarage house at Arnold till the Five Mile Act removed him to Mapperley in Derbyshire, where he preached as he had opportunity. He died on 9 Jan. 1669, and was buried at West Hallam. His funeral sermon was preached by Robert Horn, the rector, who, dying himself some six weeks later, desired to be laid in the same grave. Crompton had, with other issue, two sons, Abraham, of Derby, who died in 1734, and Samuel, pastor of a dissenting congregation at Doncaster.

 CROMPTON, RICHARD (fl. 1573–1599), lawyer, was of a family settled at Bedford Grange in the parish of Leigh, Lancashire, and was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, but did not proceed to a degree. He became a member and bencher of the Middle Temple, ‘a barrister and councillor of note,’ as stated by Wood; was summer reader in 1573 and Lent reader in 1578; and ‘might have been called to the coif, had he not preferred his private studies and repose before public employment and riches.’ In 1583 he edited and enlarged Sir A. Fitzherbert's ‘Office et Aucthoritie de Justices de Peace’ (R. Tottill, 8vo). This was reprinted in 1584 and 1593 by the same printer, in 1594 by C. Yetsweirt, and in 1606 and 1617 by the Stationers' Company. In 1587 he published ‘A Short Declaration of the Ende of Traytors and False Conspirators against the State, and the Duetie of Subjects to their Souereigne Governour’ (J. Charlewood, 4to), dedicated to Archbishop Whitgift. In 1594 appeared his chief work, ‘L'Authoritie et Jurisdiction des Courts de la Maiestie de la Roygne’ (C. Yetsweirt, 4to). In his dedication to Sir John Puckering the author states that this treatise was written after his retirement into the country and as a solace for the leisure hours of his old age. It was reprinted by J. More in 1637, and is commended in North's ‘Discourse on the Study of the Law.’ A selection of ‘Star-chamber Cases’ was made from this work and published in 1630 and 1641. His last work was issued in 1599, entitled ‘The Mansion of Magnanimitie: wherein is shewed the most high and honourable Acts of Sundrie English Kings, Princes, Dukes … performed in defence of their Princes and Countrie’ (W. Ponsonby, 4to). Another edition was printed by M. Lownes in 1608. William Crompton (1599?–1642) [q. v.], the puritan minister of Barnstaple, was his younger son.

 CROMPTON, SAMUEL (1753–1827), inventor of the spinning mule, was born at Firwood, near Bolton, on 3 Dec. 1753. His father occupied a small farm, to the cultivation of which he added domestic yarn-spinning and handloom-weaving for the Bolton market. Crompton's father died when he was a boy of five, and when the family were domiciled in some rooms of an ancient mansion near Firwood (Hall-in-the-Wood), of which his parents seem to have been appointed caretakers. His mother was a superior woman, but of a stern disposition. She sent him to a good day-school in the neighbourhood, where he made fair progress in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. From an early age he spun yarn, which he wove into quilting, his mother insisting on a daily task being done. Her harshness was aggravated by the imperfections of the spinning-jenny [see ] with which he produced his yarn, and much of his time was spent in mending its ever-breaking ends. He grew up unsocial and irritable; his only solace was playing on a fiddle constructed by himself. The annoyance caused him by the imperfections of his spinning-jenny led him to attempt the construction of a new spinning machine for his own use. From his twenty-second to his twenty-seventh year he was occupied with this project, adding to his scanty stock of tools from his earnings as a fiddler at the Bolton theatre. To secure secrecy and spare time, he worked at the new machine during the night. The consequent sounds and lights made the neighbours believe the place was haunted. In 1779 his machine was completed, at the cost of years of labour and of every shilling he had in the world. Rude as it was, it solved Crompton's problem. It produced yarn equable and slight enough to be used for the manufacture of delicate mus-