Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/163

 gerald in Hyde Park on Sunday morning, 1 Oct. 1797. After exchanging no fewer than six shots they separated and agreed to meet at the same hour and place upon the following morning. Both, however, were put under arrest that day (Gent. Mag. vol. lxvii. pt. ii. pp. 1120–1). Fitzgerald in disguise soon pursued Miss King to the family residence at Mitchelstown, co. Cork, lodging in December 1797 at the inn there. The suspicions of Lord Kingsborough and his son, Colonel King, were aroused, and on the night of 11 Dec. they burst into his room at the Kilworth hotel. Colonel King grappled with him, and Lord Kingsborough, to protect his son, shot Fitzgerald dead (Annual Reg. 1797, xxxix. 55–7). True bills were found against father and son by the grand jury of co. Cork. But on 13 Nov. 1797 the first Earl of Kingston died, and Lord Kingsborough, on succeeding to the title, demanded to be tried by his peers. On 18 May 1798 the trial came on in the House of Lords, Curran appearing for the prisoner. No evidence was offered by the crown, and the accused was unanimously acquitted (Lords' Journals, Irish, viii. 83–92). Colonel King had been acquitted at the Cork assizes in the previous April.

Lord Kingston died at Mitchelstown House, which he had rebuilt in magnificent style, on 17 April 1799 (Gent. Mag. 1799, pt. i. pp. 350–1). His wife, from whom he had been separated for some years, survived until 13 Jan. 1823, and was buried in Putney cemetery (ib. 1823, pt. i. pp. 374–5, vol. xciv. pt. i. p. 648).

Miss King lived under a feigned name in the family of a clergyman in Wales. Her brilliant conversational powers made her a general favourite. She married, in April 1805, George Galbraith Meares of Clifton, and died at Shirehampton, Gloucestershire, in 1819 (ib. 1819, pt. i. p. 587).

 KING, SAMUEL WILLIAM (1821–1868), traveller and man of science, eldest son of W. H. King, vicar of Nuneaton, Warwickshire, was born in 1821. He graduated B.A. 1845, and proceeded M.A. 1853 from St. Catharine's College, Cambridge. He became rector of Saxlingham Nethergate, Norfolk, in 1801. King was an enthusiastic entomologist and geologist, and helped Sir Charles Lyell, who was a personal friend, in his investigations both in England and abroad. In 1860 the two explored the deposits at Hoxne, Suffolk, together, and in 1865 King investigated the cave at Aurignac (cf. Author:William Boyd Dawkins in Nature, 13 July 1871). King travelled frequently on the continent, and was an enthusiastic mountain climber. His wife usually accompanied him, and the records of a long expedition made about 1855 are contained in King's only book, ‘The Italian Valleys of the Pennine Alps,’ London, 1858. It is illustrated from drawings made by the author. King was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (1858), the Geological Society (1860), and of the Society of Antiquaries. He died at Pontresina in 1868, and was buried there. His collection of fossil mammalia from the Norfolk forest beds he bequeathed to the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, London.

 KING, THOMAS (d. 1769), portrait-painter, was a pupil of [q. v.], and was an artist of ability, but eccentric and thriftless in his habits. Four of his portraits have been engraved in mezzotinto: Anthony Maddox the rope-dancer and Matthew Skeggs the actor, as Signor Bumbasto playing on a broomstick, both by R. Houston; John Keeling, J.P., by J. McArdell; and John Harrison the chronometer maker, by P. J. Tassaert. He died in John Street, Oxford Road, in 1769, and was buried in St. Marylebone churchyard.

 KING, THOMAS (1730–1805), actor and dramatist, born 20 Aug. 1730, in the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, London, where his father was a tradesman, was educated at a grammar school in Yorkshire, whence he proceeded to Westminster School. According to the school-list preserved in the Harleian MSS. at the British Museum, Thomas King was in the second form at Westminster in 1736. Genest says (Account of the Stage, iv. 259): ‘A gentleman told me that King's father kept a coffee-house, and that King, when a boy, had often brought him a dish of coffee.’ Other accounts are that King was born in a northern town in which his father lived, and that he was descended from a respectable family in Hampshire. Articled to a London solicitor, he was taken to a dramatic school, and conceived such a fancy for the stage that in October, or, according to another account, May 1747, in company with [q. v.], he ran away, and