Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/85

 preaching at Cork, Shandon, and Gortroe. Gavin acquired considerable notoriety by compiling a farrago of lies and libels, interspersed with indecent tales, to which he gave the title of ‘A Master-Key to Popery; containing … a Discovery of the most secret Practices of the secular and regular Romish Priests in their Auricular Confession,’ &c., 8vo, Dublin, 1724, dedicated, curiously enough, to a child, the Hon. Grace Boyle. The British public swallowed Gavin's inventions with avidity. Thus encouraged, he published a second edition, ‘carefully corrected from the errors of the first, with large additions,’ 3 vols. 12mo, London, 1725–6, of which a French translation by François Michel Janiçon appeared, 3 vols. 12mo, London [Amsterdam], 1726–7. In the preface to the third volume Gavin writes: ‘In less than two years 5,000 of my first and second volume are dispersed among the Protestants of Great Britain and Ireland; I shall assiduously apply myself to finish the fourth volume, which shall be a Master-Key both to Popery and to Hell,’ undeterred, as he wishes his readers to infer by the violent threats of the pope's emissaries. The concluding volume, which never appeared, was to have been entitled, according to the advertisement on the last page of vol. iii., ‘Dr. Gavin's Dreams, or the Masterpiece of his Master-Key.’

[Prefaces to vols. i. and iii. of A Master-Key.] 

GAVIN, ROBERT (1827–1883), painter, was the second son of Peter Gavin, a merchant at Leith, where he was born in 1827. He was educated at the Leith High School, and when about twenty-one years of age he entered the School of Design in Edinburgh, and studied under Thomas Duncan. He painted a large number of familiar and rustic subjects, mainly landscape compositions with figures of children, which became very popular. Some of these, such as the ‘Reaping Girl’ and ‘Phœbe Mayflower,’ were reproduced in chromo-lithography. He was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1854. About three years later he appears to have become dissatisfied with his progress as an artist, and entered into partnership with a wine merchant; but after about a year he resumed the practice of his art. He was a regular contributor to the exhibitions of the Royal Scottish Academy, and between 1855 and 1871 exhibited a few pictures at the Royal Academy in London. In 1868 he made a tour in America, and painted several characteristic phases of negro life. Soon after his return home he went to Morocco, and resided for some years at Tangier, where he painted numerous Moorish pictures. In 1879 he became an academician, and presented as his diploma work ‘The Moorish Maiden's First Love,’ a damsel caressing a beautiful white horse; this picture is now in the National Gallery of Scotland. He returned to Scotland in 1880, and continued to paint subjects of Moorish life and manners until his death, which took place at his residence, Cherry Bank, Newhaven, near Edinburgh, on 5 Oct. 1883. He died unmarried, and was buried in Warriston cemetery.

[Annual Report of the Royal Scottish Acad. 1883; Scotsman, 8 Oct. 1883; Edinburgh Courant, 8 Oct. 1883; Royal Scottish Acad. Exhibition Catalogues, 1850–82; Royal Acad. Exhibition Catalogues, 1855–71.] 

GAWDIE, JOHN (1639–1699), painter. [See .]

GAWDY, FRAMLINGHAM (1589–1654), parliamentary reporter, born on 8 Aug. 1589, was the eldest son of Sir Bassingbourne Gawdy, knight (d. 1606) of West Harling, Norfolk, by his first wife, Anne, daughter and heiress of Sir Charles Framlingham, knight, of Crow's Hall in Debenham, Suffolk. In 1627 he served the office of sheriff for Norfolk, and was afterwards appointed one of the deputy-lieutenants of the county. He sat for Thetford, Norfolk, in the parliaments of 1620–1, 1623–4, 1625–6, and 1640, and throughout the Long parliament. He has left ‘Notes of what passed in Parliament 1641, 1642,’ preserved in Addit. MSS. 14827, 14828. He was buried at West Harling on 25 Feb. 1654, leaving six sons and two daughters by his wife Lettice, daughter and coheiress of Sir Robert Knowles, knight, who had been buried at the same place on 3 Dec. 1630. Several of his and his wife's letters are in the British Museum (index to Cat. of Additions to the MSS. 1854–75, pp. 605–6). The manuscripts of the Gawdy family are calendered in part ii. of the appendix to the 10th Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

[Blomefield's Norfolk, i. 306, and elsewhere; Official Return of Members of Parliament.] 

GAWDY, FRANCIS (d. 1606), judge, was, according to the pedigrees in the Harleian MSS., the son of Thomas Gawdy of Harleston, Norfolk, by his third wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Shires, and therefore half-brother of Thomas Gawdy, serjeant-at-law, who died in 1556, and of Sir Thomas Gawdy [q. v.] Coke tells us that his ‘name of baptism was Thomas, and his name of confirmation Francis, and that name of Francis, by the advice of all the judges, in anno