Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/362

 1784); this consisted ‘of a shaft that at one-third of its height divided itself into two, the capitals having oak leaves for foliage, with the star of the order of the garter between the volutes.’ He introduced this order (the point of division being covered by an escutcheon, and the foliage being replaced by ostrich plumes) in the tetra-style portico at Beaumont Lodge, near Windsor, erected, except part of the west wing, by him for Henry Griffiths about 1785 (, Views of Seats, vol. i.), and in the porch of his own house. George III confided to him some alterations in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, which were executed (1787–90) entirely after his designs, and preserved a due harmony with the original work. The restoration included ‘the screen to the choir, executed in Coade's artificial stone, with the organ case, the altar, and the king's and additional stalls.’ Emlyn was elected F.S.A. 25 June 1795 ([], ''Chronolog. List of Soc. Antiq''. p. 58). He died at Windsor 10 Dec. 1815, in his eighty-seventh year, and was buried on the 19th in St. George's Chapel. A tablet was erected to his memory in the Bray chantry.

[Dict. of Architecture (Architect. Publ. Soc.), iii. 41; Gent. Mag. lxxxv. pt. ii. p. 573; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists (1878), p. 143; Georgian Era, iv. 502.] 

EMLYN, THOMAS (1663–1741), first unitarian minister in England, was born at Stamford, Lincolnshire, 27 May 1663. The register of St. Michael's, Stamford, has the entry ‘June 11th, Thomas, son of Silvester Embling and Mildred his wife baptzd.’ The family surname, which is spelled in thirteen different ways, is said to come from the tything of Embley, in the parish of East Wellow, Hampshire; but the Embleys or Emblins had been long settled as yeomen in the parish of Tinwell, Rutlandshire. Silvester, who originally spelled his name Emley, afterwards Emlyn, was admitted as a yeoman to scot and lot in Stamford, 28 Aug. 1651. He became a municipal councillor on 26 Aug. 1652, but was removed for nonconformity on 29 Aug. 1662. Though a nonconformist, and ‘inclined to the puritan way,’ he was a churchman in practice, and intimate with Richard Cumberland (1631–1718) [q. v.], then (1667–91) beneficed in Stamford. He was thrice married. His first wife, Katherine, was buried 25 April 1658; his second wife, Agnes (baptised 8 Nov. 1632), sister of the poet Dryden, died in childbirth, and was buried 13 Sept. 1660. On 26 Dec. 1661 he married Mildred (died 3 Dec. 1701), daughter of John Dering of Wicking, in Charing, Kent. He became a prosperous shopkeeper, acquired a small estate, and is entered as ‘gentleman’ in the record of his burial (15 March 1693). The family name is still preserved in Emblyn's Fields, Stamford.

Thomas, the only son who reached manhood, was sent in his twelfth year (August 1674) to a boarding-school at Walcot, Lincolnshire, kept by an ejected minister of foreign birth, George Boheme, younger brother of Mauritius Bohemus [q. v.] Here he attended the ministry of Richard Brocklesby (1636–1714) [q. v.], at the neighbouring church of Folkingham; if Brocklesby preached as he wrote, Emlyn was early initiated into strange doctrine.

Emlyn was placed in 1678 at the academy of an ejected minister, John Shuttlewood, then held in secret at Sulby, near Welford, Northamptonshire. He was dissatisfied with the few opportunities for reading presented by his tutor's scanty library, and paid a visit to Cambridge, where on 20 May 1679 he was entered (as ‘Thomas Emlin’) at Emmanuel, of which Dr. Holbech was then master. But he never came into residence, and remained with Shuttlewood till 1682. In August of that year he was transferred to the academy of Thomas Doolittle [q. v.], then held at Islington. In London he acquired a distaste for ‘narrow schemes of systematic divinity.’ He preached his first sermon in Doolittle's meeting-house on 19 Dec. 1682.

On 15 May 1683 he became domestic chaplain to a presbyterian lady, the widowed Countess of Donegall (Letitia, daughter of Sir William Hicks), who had a London house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. From her windows he witnessed the execution (18 July) of Lord William Russell. Next year he accompanied his patroness to Belfast, and continued to act as her chaplain after her marriage to Sir William Franklin. The presbyterian congregation of Belfast, of Scottish origin, had displeased the countess by the removal of an English minister and the appointment of Patrick Adair [q. v.] With this body Emlyn held no communion. He attended the parish church twice a day; when he preached at the castle in the evening, the vicar, Claudius Gilbert [q. v.] came to hear him. Bishop Hackett gave him, without ordination or subscription, a preaching license, ‘facultatis exercendæ gratia;’ he wore a clergyman's habit, and often officiated in the parish church. Franklin offered him a living on his estate in the west of England, but he objected to the terms of conformity. His engagement lasted till 1688, when the household was broken up by ‘domestic differences,’ as well as by the troubles which caused many protestant families to hurry from Ireland. It is