Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/312

 mander-in-chief in the East Indies. During the Egyptian war of 1882 he conducted the naval operations in the Red Sea, especially the occupation of Suez and the seizure of the canal in August. The war in the Eastern Soudan again called him to the Red Sea. After the defeat of the Egyptians at El Teb Hewett landed with a force of seamen and marines for the defence of Suakim, 6 Feb. 1884, and on the 10th was formally appointed governor by Baker Pasha, as representative of the khedive. On the 29th he was present, unofficially, it would seem, at the second battle of El Teb. In April he went on a mission to King John of Abyssinia, whom, by judicious concessions on points relating to traffic, he induced to support the Egyptian garrisons in his neighbourhood, and more especially Kassala. On 8 July 1884 he became a vice-admiral, and from March 1886 to April 1888 was in command of the Channel fleet. He had been for some months in very delicate health, which became seriously worse after his retirement from his command; he was sent as a patient to Haslar Hospital, where he died on 13 May 1888. He married, in 1857, Jane Emily, daughter of Mr. T. Wood, consul for the Morea, and left issue, besides two daughters, three sons, two of whom, William Warrington Hewett and Edward Matson Hewett, became lieutenants in the navy. Besides the K.C.B. he was also K.C.S.I., chevalier of the Legion of Honour, of the Medjidie, and of the Abyssinian order of Solomon. 

HEWIT or HEWETT, JOHN (1614–1658), royalist divine, fourth son of Thomas Hewett or Huet, a clothworker, was born at Eccles, Lancashire, in September 1614, and baptised there on the 4th of that month. He is said to have been educated first at Bolton-le-Moors and afterwards at Merchant Taylors' School. The last statement is very doubtful. According to the ‘Register of Merchant Taylors' School’ (ed. Rev. C. J. Robinson, i. 98), the only boy of the name at the school during this period was ‘John Hewet,’ born in September 1609 and admitted in 1619. But this entry cannot refer to the subject of this article, for the latter was admitted as a sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, 13 May 1633, at the age of eighteen, and matriculated 4 July. Of Hewit's Cambridge life it is only known that he never took a degree. He was at Oxford as one of Charles I's chaplains, and received the degree of D.D. by royal mandate on 17 Oct. 1643. Thence he is said to have been sent into Lancashire and Cheshire to advocate the royal cause. A few verses, found in some editions of ‘Εἰκὼν Βασιλικὴ,’ subscribed ‘J. H.,’ are attributed to him. He subsequently became chaplain to Montague Bertie [q. v.], second earl of Lindsey, at Havering in Essex, but removed to London on being chosen (in what year is not known) minister of St. Gregory's by St. Paul's. Here he was noted for his effective preaching, both by words and gesture, and for his devout and distinct reading of prayers (, Memoirs, 1668, p. 553), apparently continuing the use of the proscribed church service. Cromwell's daughter Mary was privately married by him to Lord Falconbridge in November 1657 (, xv. 101). His loyalty was so openly manifested that he occasionally made collections in his church for the exiled king under the transparent disguise of urging the congregation to ‘remember a distressed friend.’ When the Marquis of Ormonde came to England in February 1657–8 to ascertain the state of the royalist preparations, Hewit is said to have harboured him in London; but in his speech on the scaffold he declared that he could not remember ever having seen him. He was at the time actively engaged in correspondence with those who were attempting to organise a rising. Upon Cromwell's arresting John Stapley in April 1658, the latter confessed the plot in which he was engaged, related conferences he had held with Hewit, and declared he had received from Hewit's hands a commission from the king. Upon this, Hewit was arrested, and brought for trial before Cromwell's high court of justice on 1 June. Before this court he refused to plead, claiming the right to be tried by a jury, and putting in an able plea which had been drawn up for him by Prynne, and which was printed anonymously in the following year under the title of ‘Beheaded Dr. John Hewytt's Ghost pleading.’ He was sentenced on 2 June 1658 to be beheaded, and the sentence was carried out, in spite of Mrs. Claypoole's earnest intercession with Cromwell, on 8 June. On the scaffold he was attended by Dr. Wilde and Dr. Warmstry, and also by Dr. John Barwick, to whom shortly before he had entrusted some hundreds of pounds for transmission to the king, and who wore to the end of his life a ring which Hewit then gave him. He was buried on the day following in St. Gregory's Church, and on the next Sunday Nathaniel Hardy [q. v.] preached a funeral sermon on Isaiah lvii. 1, ‘The righteous perisheth,’ &c., with an outspokenness which implied assurance of general sympathy. The