Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/384

 Westminster clock. In the year after Dent's death it was successfully made by his stepson Frederick Dent (Denison's Clocks and Locks, 1857, pp. 100–30; Beckett's Clocks, Watches, and Bells, 1883, pp. 249–73). After a long illness, Dent died at his residence, The Mall, Kensington Gravel Pits, London, 8 March 1853. His will was proved in May 1853, when his personal property amounted to 70,000l. He bequeathed his business and his stock to his stepsons Frederick and Richard Rippon on condition of their taking and using the name of Dent. He was the author of: 1. ‘Chronometer Accuracy, Verification of the Longitude of Paris,’ 1838. 2. ‘Two Lectures on the Construction of Chronometers, Watches, and Clocks,’ 1841. 3. ‘On the Errors of Chronometers and Chronometrical Thermometers. Explanation of a new Construction of the Compensation Balance, and a new Chronometrical Thermometer,’ 1842. 4. ‘Description of the Dipleidscope, or Double Reflecting Meridium and Altitude Instrument,’ 1843, 4th edit. 1845. 5. ‘A Paper on the Patent Azimuth and Steering Compass,’ 1844. 6. ‘On the Construction and Management of Chronometers, Watches, and Clocks,’ 1846. 7. ‘A Treatise on the Aneroid, a newly invented Portable Barometer,’ 1849. He also sent communications to the reports of the British Association, to the ‘Nautical Magazine,’ to the ‘Memoirs’ and ‘Monthly Notices’ of the Astronomical Society, and to ‘Silliman's Journal.’

[Minutes of Proceedings of Institution of Civil Engineers, xiii. 156–61 (1854); Beckett's Clocks, Watches, and Bells (1883), pp. 181, 238, 300, 310, 313; Illustrated London News, 21 May 1853, p. 406.] 

DENT, PETER (d. 1689), naturalist, son of Peter Dent of Cambridge, became a member of Trinity College in that university, but obtained the degree of M.B. from Lambeth on 9 March 1677–8 (Gent. Mag. ccxvi. 636; Tanner MS. 41, f. 90). He was incorporated at Cambridge in 1680 (Addit. MS. 5884, f. 11 b). He practised as a physician and apothecary at Cambridge, and, dying in 1689, was buried on 5 Oct. at St. Sepulchre's in that town. Ray says he was much obliged to Dent for many observations in his great work, ‘Historia Plantarum;’ and in the preface to Willoughby's ‘Historia Piscium’ (1686) Ray remarks: ‘Dominus Petrus Dent, &c., observationes nonnullas de Piscibus cartilagineis planis, præcipue de Utero et Ovis Raiarum, et elegantes tum ipsorum Piscium, tum Partium eorundem internarum Delineationes communicavit.’

[Addit. MS. 5867, f. 24; Cooper's MS. Collections for Athenæ Cantab.; Hackman's Cat. of Tanner MSS. p. 154.] 

DENTON, HENRY (1633?–1681), writer, born about 1633, was a son of Thomas Denton, member of an ancient Cumberland family living at Warnell-Denton in that county. Another Thomas Denton was the author of a manuscript ‘History of Cumberland,’ written in 1688, and much quoted by Lysons. Henry went to Oxford in 1653, graduated B.A. on 21 March 1656, and M.A. 1659. The following year he was elected fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, and in 1664 he went to Constantinople as chaplain to the English ambassador, serving also in that capacity the Levant Company. He returned to England when the ambassador retired from his charge, and not long afterwards, in 1673, he received from the provost and fellows of his college the living of Blechingdon in Oxfordshire. Here he died on 19 Aug. 1681, and was buried in the parish church.

In 1678 he published in London a work written in Greek by Joasaph Georginos, archbishop of Samos, which Denton translated into English under the title of ‘A Description of the Present State of Samos, Nicaria, Patmos, and Mount Athos.’

The archbishop had visited Oxford for the purpose of collecting funds to pay for the completion of the Greek church in Soho Fields, London, under the sanction of Compton, bishop of London. Greek Street and Compton Street, Soho, derive their names from this circumstance.

[Wood's Athenæ, iv. 528; Lysons's Magna Brit. iv. 154; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. xii. 165; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ii. coll. 192, 219; Pearson's Chaplains to the Levant Company.] 

DENTON, JAMES (d. 1533), dean of Lichfield, was educated at Eton, whence in 1485 or 1486 he proceeded as a king's scholar to King's College, Cambridge (, Alumni Etonenses, p. 6), where he proceeded B.A. in 1489, and M.A. in 1492, becoming in due course a fellow of that college. He subsequently studied canon law at Valencia, in which faculty he became a doctor of the university there. In 1505 he obtained a license to stand in the same degree at Cambridge as at Valencia. He became a royal chaplain, and was rewarded with various preferments, including a canonry at Windsor (1509), and prebends at Lichfield (1509) and Lincoln (1514). He was also rector of several parishes, including St. Olave's, Southwark. In 1514 he went to France as almoner with Mary, the sister of Henry VIII, on her marriage with Louis XII,