Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/363

 GRAHAM, RICHARD (fl. 1680–1720), author, compiled a 'Short Account of the most Eminent Painters, both Ancient and Modern,' which was appended as a supplement to Dryden's translation of Du Fresnoy's 'Art of Painting,' published in 1695; a second edition of this translation appeared in 1716; 'a third in 1750; and a fourth, with additions, in 1769. Graham was an acquaintance of Vertue, the engraver, and supplied him with some of the information worked up by Horace Walpole into his 'Anecdotes of Painting,' notably from a manuscript notebook of paintings sold at several sales, extracted from catalogues, 'alphabetically digested, &c. (Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 23073, f. 28). In the preface to the translation of De Piles's 'Art of Painting,' published in 1706, (illusion is made to Graham's treatise, and it is regretted that he was unable to compile a similar account of the English school. He is probably identical with the R. Graham who published in 1680 'Poems upon the Death of the most Honorable the Marchioness of Winchester,' and possibly with Richard Graham, F.R.S., who contributed a paper to the 'Philosophical Transactions' of 1734.

 GRAHAM, Sir ROBERT (d. 1437), conspirator, was the uncle of Malise Graham, earl-palatine of Strathern, who had been deprived by James I. This indignity embittered Graham agninst the king, and in the parliament of 1435 he expressed his resentment in such language as led to his arrest and banishment. He quitted the court determined on revenge, and came to be the most prominent actor in the conspiracy by which James's life was lost. All contemporary authorities are, however, agreed that the real originator of the plot was not so much Graham as Walter, earl of Atholl, the king's uncle, who aspired to the crown in respect of the supposed superior legitimacy of the second family of Robert II. Despite the repeated benefits heaped on him by the king, Atholl had all along been maturing his designs on the throne, with his grandson Robert Stewart as his accomplice, and Graham as his tool. On 20 Feb. 1436-7 the court were occupying the Dominican convent at Perth. Graham, with a band of three hundred highlanders, burst into the king's chamber, and James, who had taken refuge in a vault under the floor, was discovered, dragged out, and brutally murdered. The necessity of escaping without loss of time alone saved the queen from a similar fate. Graham was followed to the fastnesses of the highlands and arrested by John Stewart Gorme of Atholl and Robert Duncanson, ancestor of the Robertsons of Strowan, who both received substantial rewards. Graham was tortured to death at Stirling. Undaunted to the end, he endured the dreadful torments inflicted on him with fortitude, justifying his conduct on the ground that he had first renounced his allegiance to James.

 GRAHAM or GRIMES, ROBERT (d. 1701), colonel and Trappist monk, was son of a certain 'Colonel' William Grimes, who is described in the contemporary letters of Lord Manchester as a lieutenant of horse under John Graham of Claverhouse, viscount Dundee, who was afterwards commander of the Bass Rock, later a recipient of Jacobite bounty in Edinburgh, and (in 1701) an alleged conspirator against the life of William of Orange. He had two sons, both notorious libertines who turned monks, the elder becoming a Capuchin friar as Brother Archangel, the younger a Trappist, Brother Alexis. The life of the younger was a stormy one. He had been whipped in his boyhood by a presbyterian tutor for attending a Romish service in Edinburgh, which led to his being transferred to the guardianship of a kinsman, Lord Perth; but when that nobleman's affairs became involved he passed into the hands of a gloomy presbyterian uncle, whose harsh asceticism no doubt influenced his after course. His name cannot be traced with certainty in the military entry books in the Public Record Office, but he appears to have served in Flanders under William III. His excesses are said to have startled London, Flanders, and Paris, and when he left the service and was presented to James II at the fugitive English court at St. Germain he was one of the most accomplished scoundrels of his day. After alternate fits of rioting and fasting, of drinking and religion, he entered the monastery of La Trappe, and became one of the most ingenious and cruel of self-tormentors so that he may be said virtually to have committed suicide. Before he died it was the custom of English courtiers serving either king to visit the recluse, to whose cell King James and bevies of court ladies were wont to repair. His death, early in 1701, deprived the English court of one of its most edifying distractions.


 * [Duke of Manchester's Court and Society (London, 1864), ii. 93, 100, 111. The details of the life of Brother Alexis form one of the most}}