Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/427

H to be best represented in two manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library (Dd. vii. 6, f. 526, and Dd. vii. 14, f. 228). They appear to date from the time of Edward I or Edward II, and Dr. Cunningham is mistaken in putting them later. A French work, very similar to Henley's, is preserved in manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, under the title of ‘Enseignements Agricoles’ (, Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi, iii. 359), and has been printed in the ‘Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes’ (4eme série, tome ii. pp. 123–41, 367–81). Henley's French text appears to have been translated into Latin more than once (Digby 147, f. 1), and more than one English translation survives (Brit. Mus. Sloane, 686, f. 1, and Bodleian, Rawlinson, B. 471, f. 16). There was also a translation into Welsh (Brit. Mus. Addit. 15056). One of the English versions was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and there is a unique copy in the Cambridge University Library. It is called ‘Boke of Husbandry, whiche Mayster Groshede sõtyme Bysshop of Lyncoln made and translated it out of Frensshe into Englysshe.’ It concludes: ‘Here endeth the Boke of Husbondry and of plantynge and graffynge of Trees and Vynes.’ The ascription of this translation to Bishop Grosseteste is incorrect. Henley's work has been much confused with several other thirteenth-century treatises, such as the anonymous work on husbandry in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 6159 and the Senescalcia, and it was largely drawn upon by the compiler of ‘Fleta.’ An edition of Henley's work, together with the anonymous work on husbandry, the Senescalcia, and Grosseteste's ‘Reules Seynt Robert,’ is published by the Royal Historical Society; the transcript, translation, and glossary are by Miss E. Lamond, and the introduction is by the Rev. W. Cunningham, D.D.

 HENLEY or HENLY, WILLIAM (fl. 1775), electrician, was elected to the Royal Society on 20 May 1773, and admitted fellow 10 June. On 16 Dec. of that year he read a paper before the society, which in 1774 appeared in pamphlet form, under the title ‘Experiments concerning the Different Efficacy of Pointed and Blunted Rods in securing Buildings against the strike of Lightning.’ The details of seven experiments are given, with diagrams and certain evidence supposed to confirm Henley's theory, that a sharp point is greatly preferable as a conductor to a knob. This and other papers of Henley's on various electrical subjects and on a machine for perpetual motion are printed in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1772, 1774, 1776, and 1778. According to Thomson, Henley was a linendraper.

 HENLEY, WILLIAM THOMAS (1813?–1882), telegraphic engineer, was born in humble circumstances at Midhurst, Sussex, about 1813. Abandoning the leather trade, to which he was brought up, he became about 1829 a light porter at a silk mercer's in Cheapside, and afterwards worked in the docks as a labourer. Meanwhile he taught himself the trade of a philosophical instrument maker, and about 1838 started in business, exhibiting during the same year an electro-magnet motive power machine at the London Institution. When Wheatstone brought out his first electric telegraph, Henley was employed to make the apparatus and assist in experiments. He made instruments for the first Electric Telegraph Company, formed in 1846, and afterwards, in conjunction with Mr. Forster, invented the magnetic needle telegraph. In 1852 he formed a powerful company, called the British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, who purchased the patent for 68,000l. in cash and shares. The Electric Telegraph Company had possession of all the railways, and ridiculed the idea of his connecting the principal towns of the kingdom; but Henley laid his wires underground, digging a trench from London to Carlisle, and from Dublin to Belfast.

Henley was an exhibitor, and obtained a council medal for electricity and magnetism at the Great Exhibition of 1851. He was early in the field as a maker of electric light apparatus, having constructed machines for the Alliance Company of France in 1849, and was the patentee of improved methods of electric lighting.

In 1857 Henley began making submarine cables at Enderby's Wharf, East Greenwich, constructing in that year thirty miles for the straits between Ceylon and the mainland, and nine miles for Egypt, and in 1858 he made 240 miles at the same works for Bass Straits, between Tasmania and Australia. In 1859 he built a cable factory at North Woolwich, and in 1860 made the