Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/311

 tinghamshire (, South Yorkshire, i. 142;, Essex, Beacontree Hundred, pp. 3–4).

Hewett died on 25 Jan. 1566–7, and was buried beside his wife in St. Martin Orgar. His monument perished in the destruction of the church at the great fire of 1666. His will (printed by Mr. Chester Waters in his ‘Chesters of Chicheley,’ i. 228–9) is dated 3 Jan. 1566–7, and was proved in the P. C. C. 11 March [9 Stonarde]. Stow and Pennant state that a portrait of Hewett in his robes as lord mayor was preserved at Kiveton House, Yorkshire, the seat of the Duke of Leeds; it has since been removed to Hornby Castle. It is a half-length on board; his dress is a black gown, furred, with red vest and sleeves, a gold chain, and a bonnet.

Hewett married Alice, third daughter of Nicholas Leveson of Halling in Kent, a rich mercer of London and sheriff in 1534. Machyn speaks of her as ‘the good lady,’ for her pious and charitable works. She died on 8 April 1561, and was buried with great pomp on 17 April at St. Martin Orgar. By this marriage Hewett is said to have had several children, all of whom died in infancy except Anne, who was born in 1543, and was twenty-three years old at her father's death. According to Stow, Anne as a child, while playing at one of the windows of her father's house on London Bridge, was dropped by a careless maid into the river, and was rescued by Edward Osborne [q. v.], her father's apprentice. Osborne certainly married her afterwards, being preferred by Sir William above many other suitors, among them George Talbot, sixth earl of Shrewsbury, who was a member of the Clothworkers' Company (City Records, Repertory 15, fol. 66), and an intimate friend of Hewett. But the date of 1536 which Pennant assigns to the episode (Some Account of London, 1791, p. 322) is wrong, since Hewett had not married his wife, Alice Leveson, on 7 Nov. 1536 (, Genealogical Memoirs of the Chesters of Chicheley, i. 227; and statement corrected by the author); nor is there any proof that Hewett ever lived on London Bridge. Osborne, who became lord mayor, inherited through his wife the greater portion of her father's estates (Inq. post mortem, W. Hewett, 9 Eliz.), and his great-grandson was the well-known Earl of Danby and Duke of Leeds [see ]. 

HEWETT, WILLIAM NATHAN WRIGHTE (1834–1888), vice-admiral, son of Dr. William Hewett, physician to William IV, was born at Brighton on 12 Aug. 1834. He entered the navy in March 1847, and served as a midshipman in the Burmese war of 1851. In 1854, while acting mate of the Beagle gun-vessel, he was attached to the naval brigade in the Crimea, and on 26 Oct. was in command of a Lancaster gun in battery before Sebastopol. A column of Russians threatened it in flank, and hurried orders were sent to spike the gun and draw off the men. Hewett boldly answered that he took no orders that did not come from Captain Lushington, the commander of the brigade; and breaking down the side parapet of the battery, he slewed the gun round, and opened a terrible fire of grape on the Russian column, then barely three hundred yards distant. The effect in that part of the field was decisive. A few days later his gallant conduct at Inkerman (5 Nov.) was again reported by Captain Lushington, and he was immediately promoted to be lieutenant, with seniority of 26 Oct. He was also appointed to the command of the Beagle, in which he served during the war, especially in the operations against Kertch and in the Sea of Azof, and which he held after the peace till the summer of 1857. On the institution of the Victoria Cross Hewett was one of the first recipients, his conduct on 26 Oct. and 5 Nov. 1854 being equally named in the ‘Gazette,’ 24 Feb. 1857 (, The Victoria Cross, p. 43). His rank had been all this time only provisional; he now passed his examination at Portsmouth, and was appointed to the royal yacht, from which he was promoted to the rank of commander 13 Sept. 1858. He then successively commanded the Viper on the west coast of Africa, and the Rinaldo on the North American and West Indian station. On 24 Nov. 1862 he was made a captain. He afterwards commanded the Basilisk on the China station from 1865 to 1869; was flag-captain to Sir Henry Kellett in the Ocean on the China station from 1870 to 1872; was captain of the Devastation 1872–3; and from October 1873 to October 1876 was commodore and commander-in-chief on the west coast of Africa, in charge of the naval operations during the Ashantee war, being present at Amoaful and the capture of Coomassie. For his services during this campaign he was nominated a K.C.B. on 31 March 1874. In May 1877 he was appointed to the Achilles, and commanded her in the Mediterranean and the Sea of Marmora under Sir Geoffrey Hornby. He attained his flag on 21 March 1878, and in April 1882 he was appointed com-