Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/368

 the Royal Society 200l., a cornelian ring for the use of the president, a portrait of Bacon, and his portrait by Hogarth. The sale of his library, prints, drawings, gems, pictures, coins, &c., in 1756 lasted fifty-six days and brought 3,090l. 5s. He destroyed various manuscripts o his own writings shortly before his death.

Folkes married (about 1714?), an actress who appeared as ‘Mrs. Bradshaw’ at the Haymarket Theatre in 1707 and at Drury Lane from 1710 to 1714 (ib. ii. 588, 589;, Account of the English Stage, vol. i.) She acted Sylvia in the ‘Double Dealer,’ Corinna in the ‘Confederacy,’ and other parts. She spoke an epilogue (about 1712) to the ‘Generous Husband,’ ‘in boy's cloaths.’ The author of the ‘History of the English Stage,’ 1741 (cited by, loc. cit.) calls her ‘one of the greatest and most promising genii of her time,’ and says that Folkes took her off the stage for her ‘exemplary and prudent conduct.’ Nichols gathers that she was a handsome woman, probably only of second-rate abilities. At the time of her husband's death she was living in confinement at Chelsea, her mind having been for some time deranged.

The issue of this marriage was: 1. A son Martin, who entered Clare Hall, and was killed, during his father's lifetime, by a fall from his horse at Caen in Normandy, whither he had gone to finish his studies. He inherited his father's taste for coins. 2. Dorothy Rishton, who married and had a son and two daughters. 3. Lucretia, married in 1756 to (Sir) Richard Betenson.

Portraits of Folkes were produced by J. Richardson (1718), Vanderbank, Hogarth (1741), Hudson, and Gibson. There is a portrait-medal of him (specimens in British Museum) by J. A. Dassier (1740), described by G. Vertue (manuscript notes in Brit. Mus.) as, ‘done very like him.’ A curious portrait-medal (specimens in British Museum) with the reverse type of a sphinx, the sun, and the tomb of Caius Sestius, was executed at Rome. It bears a date of the era of masonry corresponding either to A.D. 1738 or 1742, and there is a story (referred to in, Medallic Illustrations, ii. 571) that it was made by command of the pope as a surprise to Folkes on his visit; but Folkes is not known to have been in Rome either in 1738 or 1742.

[Memoir in Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 578–98, and numerous references in indexes in vii. 137, 566 of ib.; and in index in viii. 39 of Nichols's Lit. Illustr.; Memoir in Weld's Hist. of the Royal Society, i. 479 ff., and other references in vols. i. and ii.; Gent. Mag. 1754, xxiv. 292; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Hawkins's Medallic Illustr. (ed. Franks and Grueber), ii. 558, 571; Stukeley's Memoirs (Surtees Soc.), where Folkes's wife is called ‘Mrs. Bracegirdle.’]  FOLLETT, WILLIAM WEBB (1798–1845), attorney-general, second and eldest surviving son of Benjamin Follett, a timber merchant, of Topsham, near Exeter, and formerly a captain in the 13th regiment of foot, by his wife, a daughter of John Webb of Kinsale, was born 2 Dec. 1798. At first his health was very feeble, but in 1809 he was put to school under Dr. Lemprière at Exeter grammar school, and in 1810 to Mr. Hutchinson's school at Heavitree, near Exeter, whence he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, and took a B.A. ægrotat degree in 1818 and an M.A. in 1830. In 1836 he was appointed counsel to the university. In Michaelmas term 1814 he joined the Inner Temple, and read in the chambers of Robert Bayly and Godfrey Sykes. He became a special pleader in 1821, but early in 1824 was obliged from illness, the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, to give up work for some months. In Trinity term, however, of the same year he was called to the bar, and joined the western circuit in the following summer. His first reported case is Moore v. Stockwell, 6 Barnwell and Cresswell, p. 76, in Michaelmas term 1826. From the time he came to London he was a tory, and lived very much with John Wilson Croker [q. v.], though at Cambridge his opinions are said to have been whig. He was a cousin of Mrs. Croker, and eventually married Croker's ward, Jane Mary, eldest daughter of Sir Ambrose Hardinge Giffard, chief justice of Ceylon, in October 1830, by whom he had five sons and two daughters. From the first, except for a few early appearances at sessions, his professional career was one unbroken success, and yet it provoked neither envy nor detraction. The years 1831–3 brought him an election petition practice of unprecedented magnitude. In 1832 he contested Exeter unsuccessfully against Buller and Divett, but in 1835 was returned for it, heading the poll with 1,425 votes. He succeeded well in the House of Commons, but for the most part contented himself with speaking on legal and not on general topics. He became a king's counsel in Michaelmas term 1834, and was solicitor-general in Sir Robert Peel's administration from November 1834 to April 1835, and was also knighted. His first speech was on 31 March 1835 upon Lord John Russell's Irish church motion. On 23 June of the same year he moved an amendment to clause 9 of the Government Corporation Bill for the purpose of preserving the rights of freemen to the parliamentary franchise, and was only defeated by 278 to 232.