Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/66

 ing the intervention of the duke, his remains were denied by the priesthood the rites of Christian burial, and the funeral service was read by an English gentleman. Sir John was survived by a third wife, who died on 27 Aug. 1805. Her maiden name and the date of the marriage are not known.

Portraits of Sir John and his second wife were painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in March 1761; Mrs. Irwin's portrait was engraved in mezzotint by Watson.

[Gent. Mag. 1788, p. 562; Morning Post and Morning Chronicle, 20 June 1788; Memoirs of Sir James Campbell of Ardkinglass, 1832, i. 279; Earl of Chesterfield's Letters, 1845–53, iii. 307, 310, 337, 363, 433, iv. 17, 95, 105, 209, 348, 473, 477, 479, 485, v. 346; Wraxall's Memoirs, ed. 1884, iii. 91–5; Corresp. de Madame du Deffand, Paris, 1865, i. 483, 490, 544; Grenville Corresp.]  ISAAC, SAMUEL (1815–1886), projector of the Mersey tunnel, son of Lewis Isaac of Poole, Dorsetshire, by Catherine, daughter of N. Solomon of Margate, was born at Chatham in 1815. Coming to London as a young man, he established a large business as an army contractor in Jermyn Street, trading as Isaac, Campbell, & Company. His brother, Saul Isaac, J. P., afterwards member for Nottingham 1874–80, was associated with him in partnership. The firm during the Confederate war in America were the largest European supporters of the southern states. Their ships, outward bound with military stores and freighted home with cotton, were the most enterprising of blockade-runners between 1861 and 1865. Isaac's eldest son Henry, who died at Nassau, West Indies, during the war, had much to do with this branch of the business. Having raised a regiment of volunteers from among the workmen of his own factory at Northampton, Isaac was rewarded with the military rank of major. He and his firm were large holders of Confederate funds, and were consequently ruined on the conclusion of the American war in 1865. In 1880 he acquired the rights of the promoters of the Mersey tunnel, and himself undertook the making of the tunnel, letting the works to Messrs. Waddell, and employing as engineers Mr. James Brunlees and Sir Douglas Fox. The Right Hon. H. C. Raikes became chairman, with the Right Hon. E. P. Bouverie as vice-chairman, of the company formed to carry through the undertaking. Money was raised, and the boring was completed under Isaac's superintendence on 17 Jan. 1884. The tunnel was opened on 13 Feb. 1885; the first passenger train ran through on 22 Dec.; it was formally opened by the Prince of Wales, 20 Jan. 1886 (Illustrated London News, 30 Jan. 1886, pp. 111, 112). Queen Victoria accepted from Isaac an ingenious jewelled representation of the tunnel, in which the speck of light which shines at the end of the excavation was represented by a brilliant. He formed a collection of paintings containing some of the best works of Mr. B. W. Leader, A.R.A. Isaac died at 29 Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, London, on 22 Nov. 1886, and left 203,084l. 17s. 9d.

[Times, 24 Nov. 1886, p. 6; Jewish Chronicle, 26 Nov. 1886, p. 10.]  ISAACSON, HENRY (1581–1654), theologian and chronologer, born in the parish of St. Catherine, Coleman Street, London, in September 1581, was the eldest son of Richard Isaacson, by Susan, daughter of Thomas Bryan (Visitation of London, 1633–5, Harl. Soc., ii. 3–4). He appears to have been educated under the care of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes [q. v.], by whom he was sent to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Upon leaving college he became an inmate of the bishop's house, and remained with him as his amanuensis and intimate friend until Andrewes's death in 1626. In 1645 he held the office of treasurer of Bridewell and Bedlam (Gent. Mag. 1831, pt. ii. p. 502). Besides handsomely providing for his numerous children, of whom several settled in Cambridgeshire, Isaacson, in imitation of his father, was a benefactor to the poor of the parish of St. Catherine, Coleman Street, where he died on 7 Dec. 1654, and was buried on the 14th (, Obituary, Camden Soc., p. 39, name misprinted ‘Jackson’). In his will he described himself as ‘citizen and painter-stainer of London’ (P. C. C. 263, Aylett), and bequeathed to Dr. Collins, provost of King's College, Cambridge, a portrait of Bishop Andrewes. By his wife Elizabeth, daughter and sole heiress of John Fan of London, he had nine sons and eight daughters. He was owner of the advowson of Woodford, Essex, to which he presented successively his younger brother William and his eldest son Richard (, Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 377).

In 1630 appeared a small volume called ‘Institutiones Piæ, or Directions to Pray,’ &c., 12mo, London, collected by ‘H. I.,’ which passed through several editions. Some passages are borrowed from Andrewes's ‘Preces Privatæ,’ and in a preface to the fourth edition (1655) the original publisher, Henry Seile, claimed the whole work for Andrewes, and described Isaacson's relations to the three former editions as that of a kind foster-father then lately dead (cf. Hale's Preface to Institutiones Piæ, ed. 1839).

Isaacson's principal work is a great folio