Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/119

Fabricus the other great exponent of the art of mezzotint engraving at this period. It is possible that Faber may have also worked under him. To Faber posterity owes the preservation of the school of portraiture which was in vogue between the days of Sir Godfrey Kneller (whose school and style are preserved in Smith's engravings) and those of Reynolds and Gainsborough. Among his numerous portraits, more than four hundred of which have come down to us, may be especially noted the fine whole-length of Miss Jane Collier, and that of Father Couplet (from a picture by Kneller at Windsor); also the portraits of Charles II in his robes of state (after Lely), Ignatius Loyola (after Titian), Carreras (after Kneller), and the six aldermen known as ‘Benn's Club’ (after Hudson). He published some sets of engravings, among the best known being ‘The Beauties of Hampton Court,’ ‘The Five Philosophers of England,’ and ‘The Members of the Kit-Cat Club.’ This club [for which see ] at one time held its meetings in Fountain Court, Strand, in which Faber also resided; this may have led to his being engaged by Tonson to engrave the series of portraits painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Faber was engaged on the engravings from 1731 to 1735, and in the latter year they were published by him and Tonson jointly; the plates subsequently passed into the hands of the Boydells, and were sold at the Boydell sale in 1818. During the latter part of his life Faber resided at the Golden Head in Bloomsbury Square, where he died of the gout on 2 May 1756. From the inscription on a masonic portrait of Frederick, prince of Wales, it appears that Faber was a freemason himself. He did not confine his engravings to portraiture, but occasionally produced other subjects, such as ‘The Taking of Namur’ (after Wyck), ‘St. Peter’ (after Vandyck), ‘Salvator Mundi’ (after R. Browne), and various domestic subjects after Philip Mercier. His engravings show a steady progress and improvement throughout his career. According to Walpole, his widow, of whom there is an engraving by Faber from a portrait by Hudson, remarried a lawyer of the name of Smith.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits; Dodd's manuscript Hist. of English Engravers; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Dallaway and Wornum; manuscript notes in Anderdon's Collectanea Biographica (print room, British Museum).]  FABRICIUS. [See fl. 1429.]

 FABYAN, ROBERT (d. 1513), chronicler, came of a respectable family in Essex. We gather from his will that his father's name was John, and his mother's Agnes. It would seem that he followed his father as a clothier in London, where he became a member of the Draper's Company and alderman of the ward of Farringdon Without. In 1493 he held the office of sheriff, and in 1496 was one of a committee appointed to lay before Henry VII the grievances of the London merchants as to the tolls imposed on their exports to Flanders (, Fœdera, xii. 648, 654). In 1498 he was one of those appointed to hold Newgate and Ludgate against the Cornish rebels who were encamped at Blackheath, and soon after was one of the commissioners to assess the fifteenth granted by parliament for war against Scotland. In 1503 he resigned his office of alderman on the ground that he was not rich enough to discharge the duties of the mayoralty. This, however, would seem to be a measure of extreme precaution, as his will (, Introduction, p. iii) shows that he was a man of considerable wealth. This wealth, however, was inherited from his wife Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of John Pake, a London clothier, whom he married probably in 1485, as a deed of that date appoints trustees of John Pake's lands for the joint benefit of Fabyan and his wife. The lands, which were of considerable extent, lay in the parish of Theydon Garnon in Essex, and on them was a manor-house called Halstedys, of which no traces are now left (Brit. Mus. Additional Charter, 28925, printed in Historical Review, vol. iii.). Stow (Survey of London, ed. 1720, bk. ii. 145) mentions his epitaph in the church of St. Michael, Cornhill, and says that he died in 1511. The epitaph has now disappeared, but Bale says that he died on 28 Feb. 1512. His will was dated 11 July 1511, and was proved 12 July 1513, so that we may assume Bale's date to be accurate, and that he died on 28 Feb. 1513 (N.S.) His will is an excellent example of wills of the period, and is full of minute instructions about his funeral and his ‘moneth's minde,’ as well as the distribution of his property, of which the deed above referred to gives a minute description. From it we learn that he left a widow, four sons, and two daughters, who were survivors of a larger family, as he orders the figures of ten sons and six daughters to be set upon his tomb.

Fabyan was the first of the citizen chroniclers of London who conceived the design of expanding his diary into a general history. His work was called by himself ‘The Concordance of Histories,’ and, beginning with