Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/423

Ford After the Restoration he invented a mode of coining farthings. Each piece was to differ minutely from another to prevent forgery. He failed in procuring a patent for these in England, but obtained one for Ireland. He died in Ireland before he could carry his design into execution, on 3 Sept. 1670. His body was brought to England, and interred in the family burial-p1ace at Harting. Wood says: 'He was a great virtuoso of his time, yet none of the Royal Society, and might have done greater matters if that he had not been disincouraged for those things he had done before' (Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii, 906). By the marriage of his only daughter, Catharine, to Ralph lord Grey of Werke, Up Park became the property of the earls of Tankerville until it was sold in 1745.

He wrote; 1. 'A Design for bringing a Navigable River from Rickmansworth in Hartfordshire to St. Giles's in the Fields,' &c., London, 1641, 4to, with an answer by Sir Walter Roberts, printed the same year, and both reprinted in 1720. Ford's pamphlet is also reprinted in the 'Hurleian Miscellany.' 2. 'Experimented Proposals how the King may have money to pay and maintain his Fleets with ease to his people. London may he rebuilt, and all proprietors satisfied. Money be lent at six percent, on pawns. And the Fishing-Trade set up, which alone is able and sure to enrich us all. And all this without altering, straining, or thwarting any of our Laws or Customes now in use,' London, 1666, 4to. To this was added a 'Defence of Bill Credit.' 3. 'Proposals for maintaining the Fleet and rebuilding London, by bills to be made payable on the taxes to be given to the King by Parliament,' manuscript in Public Record Office, 'State Papers,' Dom. Charles II, vol. clxii. 4. Important letters of intelligence preserved among the 'Clarendon State Papers' in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

[Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion (1843), pp. 477, 478, 626; Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, i. 545; Dallaway's Sussex; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. ix. 80; Calendars of State Papers, Dom. 1649–50 p. 46, 1659–60 p. 97, 1661–2 p. 146, 1663–4 pp. 396, 655, 1664–5 pp. 72, 214, 230, 1665–6 p. 170, 1666–7 pp. 127, 439; Hist. MSS. Comm. 6th Rep. 330, 331, 7th Rep. 686, 9th Rep. 393; Sussex Archæological Collections, v. 36–63, ix. 50–3, xix. 94, 118; Tierney's Arundel, pp. 58–68.]  FORD, EDWARD (1746–1809), surgeon, is stated to have been ‘the son of Dr. Ford, a prebendary of Wells,’ and to have been born in that city ‘in 1750’ (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxix. pt. ii. p. 1168). As, however, his age at the time of his death is given as ‘62’ (ib. p. 984), he would have been born in 1746, the son of Thomas Ford, prebendary of St. Decuman, Wells, and vicar of Banwell and of Wookey, Somersetshire, who died 29 Aug. of the same year (ib. xvi. 496;, Fasti, ed. Hardy, i. 185, 197). He received his medical training under Dr. John Ford, then in practice at Bristol. At an early age he settled as a surgeon in London, was admitted a member of the court of assistants of the Royal College of Surgeons, acquired an excellent practice, and was greatly liked. In 1780 he was appointed surgeon to the Westminster General Dispensary, which office he resigned, after more than twenty years' service, on 16 July 1801. At this time, the finances of the charity being very low, Ford generously presented it with the arrears of his salary, amounting altogether to four hundred guineas, and his example was followed by the physicians to the institution, Drs. Foart Simmons and Robert Bland (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxi. pt. ii. p. 661). He died 15 Sept. 1809 at Sherborne, Dorsetshire, when on his way from Weymouth to Bath, ‘a very humane and benevolent gentleman, well known in the abodes of poverty, wretchedness, and disease.’ Besides papers in various medical serials (, Alphabetical Register of Authors, p. 138, supplement, pt. i. pp. 360–1), Ford was author of a valuable treatise entitled ‘Observations on the Disease of the Hip Joint; to which are added some Remarks on White Swellings of the Knee … illustrated by cases and engravings,’ 8vo, London, 1794 (, Bibl. Brit. i. 257 d, 377 e), of which revised editions were published in 1810 and 1818 by his nephew and successor Thomas Copeland [q. v.], to whom he bequeathed his house in Golden Square, London, and a considerable legacy. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, 3 May 1792 (, Chronological List of Soc. Antiq. 1798, p. 51). He was twice married. His first wife, Sarah Frances, daughter of Hugh Josiah Hansard, died in 1783, and was buried at Hillingdon, Middlesex (, Parishes in Middlesex, p. 161).

[David Rivers's Literary Memoirs of Living Authors, 1798, i. 191; Noble's Continuation of Granger, iii. 115.]  FORD, EMANUEL (fl. 1607), romance writer, was the author of 'Parismus, the renovmed prince of Bohemia. His most famous, delectable, and pleasant historie, conteining his noble battailes fought against the Persians, his love to Laurana, the king's daughter of Thessaly, and his strange adventures in the desolate Island.' London,