Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/420

Maskell its definition by Pope Pius IX in 1854, and acquiesced with reluctance in the decree of the Vatican council defining the dogma of papal infallibility (see his Letter to the Editor of the Dublin Review upon the Temporal Power of the Pope and his personal Infallibility, London, 1869, 8vo, and his pamphlet entitled What is the meaning of the late Definition on the Infallibility of the Pope? London, 1871, 8vo). From the 'Tablet' in 1872 he reprinted in pamphlet form, under the title ' Protestant Ritualists' (London, 8vo), some very trenchant letters on the privy council case of Sheppard v. Bennett, and generally on the position of the high church party in the church of England. Maskell never took orders in the church of Rome, and spent his later life in retirement in the west of England, dividing his time between the duties of a country gentleman and antiquarian pursuits. He was a man of considerable literary and conversational powers, had a large and well-assorted library of patristic literature, and was an enthusiastic collector of mediæval service books, enamels and carvings in ivory, which from time to time he disposed of to the British and South Kensington Museums. For the committee of council on education he edited in 1872 'A Description of the Ivories, Ancient and Modern, in the South Kensington Museum,' with a preface — a model in its kind — reprinted separately under the title 'Ivories Ancient and Mediæval' in 1875, London, 8vo. Maskell was in the commission of the peace, and a deputy-lieutenant for the county of Cornwall, he died at Penzance on 12 April 1890. He married twice, but had issue only by his first wife.

Besides the works above mentioned Maskell published: 1. 'Budehaven; a Pen-and-ink Sketch, with Portraits of the principal Inhabitants,' London, 1863, 8vo, reprinted, with some other trifles, under the title 'Odds and Ends,' London, 1872, 12mo. 2. 'The Present Position of the High-Church Party in the Established Church of England' (a review of the Rev. James Wayland Joyce's 'The Civil Power in its Relation to the Church,' with a reprint of the two letters published in 1850), London, 1869, 8vo. 3. 'The Industrial Arts, Historical Sketches, with numerous Illustrations,' anon, for the Committee of Council on Education, London, 1876, 8vo, and some other miscellanea. He printed privately a catalogue of some rare books in his library, as 'Selected Centuries of Books from the Library of a Priest in the Diocese of Salisbury,' Chiswick, 1848, and a 'Catalogue of Books used in and relating to the public services of the Church of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,' 1845, 16mo.

 MASKELYNE, NEVIL (1732–1811), astronomer royal, was the third son of Edmund Maskelyne of Purton in Wiltshire, by his wife Elizabeth Booth, and was born in London on 6 Oct. 1732. From Westminster School he entered in 1749 Catharine Hall, Cambridge, but migrated to Trinity College, whence he graduated in 1754 as seventh wrangler, taking degrees of M.A., B.D., and D.D. successively in 1757, 1768, and 1777. He was elected a fellow of his college in 1757, and admitted to the Royal Society in 1758. Having been ordained to the curacy of Barnet in Hertfordshire in 1755, he was presented by his nephew, Lord Clive, in 1775 to the living of Shrawardine in Shropshire, and by his college in 1782 to the rectory of North Runcton, Norfolk. The solar eclipse of 25 July made an astronomer of him, as it did of Lalande and Messier; he studied mathematics assiduously, and about 1755 established close relations with Bradley, He learned his methods, and assisted in preparing his table of refractions, first published by Maskelyne in the 'Nautical Almanac' for 1767, the rule upon which it was founded having been already communicated to the Royal Society (Phil. Trans, liv. 205). Through Bradley's influence he was sent by the Royal Society to observe the transit of Venus of 6 June 1761, in the island of St. Helena. He proposed besides to determine the parallaxes of Sirius and the moon (ib. li. 889, iii. 21), but met disappointment everywhere. The transit was concealed by clouds; a defective mode of suspension rendered his zenith-sector practically useless (ib. liv. 348). An improvement on this point, however, which he was thus led to devise, was soon after universally adopted; and during a stay in the island of ten months he kept tidal records, and determined the altered rate of one of Shelton's clocks (ib. pt. 441, 586). On the voyage out and home he experimented in taking longitudes by lunar 