Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/74

 the victors to Wigan, Warrington, Winwick, and Frodsham, where seven regiments of foot laid down their arms. When Cromwell invaded Scotland in 1650, Hodgson, whose regiment was now commanded by Lambert, took part in the campaign. His description of the battle of Dunbar is the most valuable portion of his ‘Autobiography.’ After Dunbar Hodgson was given the command of a company in Cromwell's regiment of foot, which was sent into Lancashire to assist Colonel Lilburn against the Earl of Derby. Though he did not arrive until after Derby's defeat, his regiment helped to intercept the flight of the Scots after Worcester, and took part in the capture of the Isle of Man (1651). After Cromwell became protector Hodgson wished to leave the army, and the Protector, to enable him to be near his family, removed him into Lambert's regiment of horse as a lieutenant. When the army was reorganised by the parliament in 1659, Hodgson was transferred to the regiment of Colonel Saunders, with the same rank (Commons' Journals, vii. 668, 712), and ordered to join Monck's army in Scotland. But he would not fight against his old commander, General Lambert, and delayed till Monck marched into England and his prospects of further employment ended. Two informations against Hodgson are printed in ‘Depositions from York Castle’ (Surtees Soc., pp. 86, 157). Hodgson acquired Coley Hall by lease for fifteen years, 11 April 1657 (Memoirs, p. 8). In the ‘State Papers’ there is an account of a meeting of ‘a hundred fanatics, ministers, and others’ on 3 July 1660 at Coley Hall, the house of Hodgson, called ‘a great fanatic.’ From Coley Hall he removed to Cromwell Bottom, and thence to Ripon in 1680 (ib. p. 16), and is probably the John Hodgson mentioned by Oliver Heywood as dying at Ripon 24 Jan. 1683–4, ætat. 66. The last date in his diary is 11 Jan. 1683–4. He married, 17 April 1646, a lady named Stanclife, and had issue two sons, Timothy and Eleazar, and three daughters: Sarah, who died in infancy; Martha, who died the widow of William Kitchin in 1672, leaving one child, Elizabeth; and Lydia. His ‘Memoirs … touching his conduct in the Civil Wars, and his troubles after the Restoration,’ was first published with Sir Henry Slingsby's ‘Original Memoirs, written during the great Civil War,’ Edinburgh, 1806, 8vo. Prefixed was a notice by Joseph Ritson, who considered that in point of importance, interest, and even pleasantry, Hodgson's narrative was infinitely superior to Defoe's ‘Memoirs of a Cavalier.’ Carlyle styles the author ‘an honest-hearted, pudding-headed Yorkshire puritan.’ A number of fresh notes, some of value, are given in Turner's edition, Brighouse, 1882.

 HODGSON, JOHN (1779–1845), antiquary, son of Isaac Hodgson and Elizabeth, daughter of William Rawes, was born at Swindale, in the parish of Shap, Westmoreland, on 4 Nov. 1779. His father was a stonemason, but the Hodgsons were an old Westmoreland family. The neighbourhood was well supplied with small endowed schools, generally taught by the clergy, and it was the custom in every family for one son to receive a good education with a view to taking holy orders. Accordingly Hodgson studied at the grammar school of Bampton from the age of seven to nineteen. He learned a good deal of classics, mathematics, chemistry, botany, and geology, and acquired an interest in natural history and local antiquities, through his free rambles in the country. His parents were too poor to make a university education possible, and at the age of twenty he had to earn his own livelihood as the master of the village school at Matterdale, near the lake of Ulleswater. There he enjoyed an endowment of 11l. a year, but soon removed to a better school at Stainton, near Penrith. Early in 1801 he was appointed to the school of Sedgefield in the county of Durham, where the endowment was 20l. The rector of Sedgefield, Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Barrington, a nephew of the Bishop of Durham, and his curates showed much kindness to Hodgson, and helped him by the loan of books. He was offered an appointment as director of some ironworks near Newcastle, with a salary of 300l. a year; but he refused this tempting offer on the ground that he wished ‘to pursue a literary rather than a mercantile life.’ In 1802, however, he had the misfortune to fail in an examination for holy orders. This disappointment, combined with ill-health, led him to leave Sedgefield in 1803 for the mastership of the school at Lanchester, near Durham. There in 1804 he succeeded in passing his examination for ordination, and became curate of the chapelries of Esh and Saltley, two hamlets in the parish of Lanchester, where he still kept his school.

A fine Roman camp at Lanchester attracted Hodgson's attention, and led him to make elaborate studies of Roman antiquities. In 1807 he published a little volume, ‘Poems written at Lanchester,’ not without merit; one of them, ‘Langovicum, a Vision,’ is a poetical account of the Roman camp. The volume was accompanied with antiquarian