Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/313

 sermon was printed surreptitiously and anonymously (often wrongly ascribed to Dr. G. Wilde), and Dr. Hardy thereupon boldly published a correct copy under his own name at the shop of a bookseller named Joseph Crawford, who had for his sign ‘The King's Head.’ Hewit's speech and prayer upon the scaffold were immediately printed in more than one edition, and mourning-rings were distributed to his friends, which were inscribed with the words ‘Herodes necuit Johannem.’ The publication of ‘Nine Select Sermons’ preached at St. Gregory's speedily followed. This volume was disavowed, as unauthorised by Dr. Wilde and Dr. Barwick on behalf of Hewit's widow, in a notice reprinted in a second volume of sermons entitled ‘Repentance and Conversion the Fabrick of Salvation; being the last Sermons preached by Dr. Hewytt.’ But Hardy, in the preface to the funeral sermon, speaks of ‘two books of sermons’ as having been surreptitiously issued, and implies that the second volume bore Barwick's and Wilde's names without their knowledge or consent.

Hewit married, first, a daughter of Robert Skinner, merchant-tailor, of London; and secondly, Mary, daughter of Robert Bertie, first earl of Lindsey [q. v.], who was slain at Edgehill. By his first wife he had three children, and by his second wife (who survived him) two daughters. When Dr. Barwick went to meet Charles II at Breda in 1660, among several petitions which he preferred to the king was one that Hewit's widow and his eldest son, John, might receive some recompense. In consequence an annuity of 100l. was granted to the son 19 Feb. 1661 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1660–1, p. 523). On 21 June in that year Lady Mary Hewit (who shortly afterwards was re-married to the well-known royalist, Sir Abraham Shipman) petitioned the House of Lords to except from the Act of Oblivion all those who had passed sentence on her husband.

Other publications under Hewit's name are: 1. ‘Certain Considerations against the Vanities of this World and the Terrors of Death, delivered to a friend a little before his death,’ in verse, on a single sheet. 2. ‘Letter to Dr. Wilde the day before he suffered death, read by Dr. Wilde at his funerall,’ a single sheet, London, 9 June 1658. 3. ‘Prayers of Intercession for their Use who mourn in Secret for the Publick Calamities of the Nation,’ 1659. A prayer is included in a collection of prayers used before and after sermons called ‘Pulpit Sparks,’ 1659. Portraits are prefixed to his sermons on repentance and to Prynne's plea. In a note in Ashmole MS., Bodleian Library, 826, f. 115, he is styled ‘doctor mellifluus, doctor altivolans, et doctor inexhaustibilis,’ and it is said that these three epithets can never be separated from him. 

HEWITSON, WILLIAM CHAPMAN (1806–1878), naturalist, was born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 9 Jan. 1806. Educated at York, he was brought up as a land-surveyor, and was for some time employed under George Stephenson on the London and Birmingham railway. Delicate health and the accession to an ample fortune through the death of a relative led him to give up his profession and devote himself to scientific studies. After residing for a time at Bristol and Hampstead, he purchased in 1848 about ten or twelve acres of Oatlands Park, Surrey, and built a house there, in which the last thirty years of his life were spent, and where everything was arranged with a view to his favourite studies. In early life he collected British coleoptera and lepidoptera; he then devoted attention for some years to the study of birds' eggs, in 1833 making a trip to Norway to discover the breeding-places of some of our migratory species. Notes on ornithology and oology from his pen will be found in vol. ii. of Jardine's ‘Magazine of Zoology,’ in the ‘Ibis,’ the ‘Zoologist,’ and other periodicals; but from the date of his settlement near London he concentrated his attention on lepidoptera, more particularly the diurnal lepidoptera of the world. He bought specimens from travellers and naturalists in all quarters of the globe, whose expenses he often partly or wholly paid. In one instance a single specimen cost him 350l. He thus formed what was probably the most complete collection of diurnal lepidoptera in the world, and this, together with some choice pictures and water-colour drawings, and some valuable stuffed birds, he left to the nation; they are now in the natural history section of the British Museum in Cromwell Road, South Kensington. Hewitson was a most accomplished artist and scrupulously accurate draughtsman, and his figures, whether of birds' eggs or butterflies, are drawn and coloured with conscientious care, but they were, after all, only perfect diagrams, as he