Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/355

H second son, John, was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1634, and became attorney-general of the duchy of Lancaster on the Restoration, was knighted at Whitehall 27 May 1664, and sat in parliament for Clitheroe from 1661 to 1679. He married Margaret, daughter of Sir John Mennes, by whom he had an only daughter, Margaret, who married George Verney, fourth lord Willoughby de Broke. 

HEATH, ROBERT (fl. 1650), poet, was not improbably the Robert Heath (born in London) who entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1634, and has Latin verses before Gabriel Dugres's ‘Grammaticæ Gallicæ Compendium,’ 1636. He may also be the ‘R. H.’ who published in 1659 ‘Paradoxical Assertions and Philosophical Problems.’ His chief work, ‘Clarastella; together with Poems occasionall, Elegies, Epigrams, Satyrs,’ 8vo, was issued by Humphrey Moseley in 1650. From Moseley's address to the reader it appears that the book was published without Heath's knowledge. The first part consists of a series of love-poems to ‘Clarastella;’ among the ‘occasional poems’ are some verses headed ‘To a friend wishing peace,’ describing the inconveniences of civil war, and earnestly pleading for the establishment of peace; the third part includes elegies on Sir Bevil Grenvil, William Lawes, the musician, and other friends who had fallen in the wars; the fourth part is a collection of epigrams; and the volume concludes with a batch of satires. Some of the poems addressed to ‘Clarastella’ are hardly inferior to Carew's best love-verses. 

HEATH, ROBERT (d. 1779), mathematician, was a captain in the army, and is described late in life as a ‘half-pay captain of invalids’. For a time he served with his regiment in the Scilly Isles, and while there wrote ‘A History of the Islands of Scilly, with a Tradition of the Land called Lioness, and a General Account of Cornwall.’ The book, published in London in 1750, and dedicated to the Duke of Cumberland, included a new map of the isles, drawn by himself from an actual survey made in 1744; it was reprinted in 1808 in Pinkerton's ‘Voyages and Travels,’ ii. 729–784. Heath is best known as a frequent contributor to the ‘Ladies' Diary.’ His earliest contribution to that periodical is dated in 1737. He rapidly secured a high position on the staff, and proposed the prize essays for 1739, 1740, 1742, 1746, and 1748. When Henry Beighton [q. v.], the editor, died in October 1743, the proprietors, the Stationers' Company, allowed Beighton's widow to conduct the ‘Diary,’ with the aid of Heath as her deputy. In that capacity Heath exercised full editorial control from 1744 to 1753, and continued to write largely for the work, contributing under his own and assumed names. But Heath's violent temper and loose notions of honesty brought him into endless difficulties. A personal quarrel with Thomas Simpson [q. v.] led Heath to abuse virulently in print Simpson's ‘Doctrine of Ultimators’ (1750) and ‘Doctrine of Fluxions’ (1751), while he praised inferior works on the same subject by William Emerson [q. v.] John Taylor, who like Emerson was a contributor to the ‘Diary,’ inserted in his ‘Mathematical Exercises’ (1750–3) an able defence of Simpson signed ‘Honestus’ against Heath's assertions. In 1753 the proprietors, the Stationers' Company, dismissed Heath and installed his rival Simpson in the editorial chair.

One of the chief charges proved against Heath was that while editor of the ‘Ladies' Diary’ he started in 1749 a journal on similar lines on his own account, and appropriated for his own periodical, which he called ‘The Palladium,’ the best contributions sent to him as editor of the ‘Diary.’ On his dismissal from the latter office he concentrated all his energies on this venture of his own, and made it the vehicle of much intemperate abuse directed against Simpson, the Stationers' Company, and the ‘Ladies' Diary.’ The title of his journal was often changed. It was