Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/288

 which ‘Palladis Tamia’ was the second, appeared in 1599 as ‘Wits Theater of the Little World,’ for which Nicholas Ling was again responsible. A fourth volume was ‘Palladis Palatium. Wisedoms Pallace, or the fourth part of Wits Commonwealth’ (London, by G. Elde for Francis Burton, 1604, 8vo); a unique copy belongs to Sir Charles Isham of Lamport. This part is ascribed in the ‘Stationers' Registers,’ iii. 264, to William Wrednot.

Meres also published translations, probably made through the French, of two religious works by the Spaniard, Luis de Grenada. The first, ‘Granados Devotion, exactly teaching how a Man may truely dedicate and deuote himself vnto God,’ London (E. Allde for Cuthbert Burbie), 1598, 12mo, was dedicated to Will Sammes of the Middle Temple, from London, 11 May 1598. The second, ‘Sinners Guide, A Worke contayning the whole Regiment of Christian Life,’ London (R. Field for Edward Blount), 1614, 4to, was dedicated to Sir Thomas Egerton under date 10 May 1598.

Another Francis Meres, with whom the divine is sometimes confused, died in 1557, and belonged to an elder branch of the family. He was son of Thomas, the disinherited elder son of one Sir John Meres, whose younger son, Anthony, founded the Aubourn branch to which the divine belonged. This Francis was father of Anthony (d. 1617), a prosperous merchant of Lincoln, whose son, Robert Meres, D.D. (1596–1652), was chancellor of the cathedral of Lincoln (from 1631), vicar of Tempsford, Bedfordshire, and rector of Hougham-cum-Marston. Dr. Robert Meres had a son, (1635–1715), who was knighted 11 June 1660, was M.P. for Lincoln from 1659 to 1710, and a commissioner of the admiralty from 1679 to 1684. He became prominent as a whig politician. Pepys admired his good sense as a speaker (Diary, 2 Jan. 1666–7). On the accession of James II he assumed an attitude of stubborn resistance to the king's policy of religious toleration. At the opening of the first parliament of the reign his name and that of Sir James Trevor were presented for the speakership to the king, who at once chose the latter (, Autobiog. pp. 197, 212). On 1 July 1685 Meres sought to pass through parliament a bill to compel all foreigners settled in England to adopt the English liturgy (Lives of the Norths, ed. Jessopp, iii. 180–1). By his wife, Anne, daughter of Sir Erasmus de la Fontaine, he left three sons, Thomas, John, and William. The eldest son was disinherited, and was father of John Meres [q. v.] The second son, Sir John Meres, F.R.S., one of the six clerks in chancery, was high sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1715, and was author of ‘The Equity of Parliaments and Publick Faith vindicated, in answer to [Sir Richard Steele's] Crisis of Property, and addressed to the Annuitants’ (1720, two editions). He died unmarried in 1736. 

MERES, JOHN (1698–1761), printer and journalist, son of Thomas, the disinherited eldest son of Sir Thomas Meres (1635–1715) [see under, ad fin.], was born in London in 1698, and apprenticed by his father, on 9 Feb. 1712, to William Stephens, printer. A kinsman, Hugh Meres or Meere, was already in the printing business, and was also a director of the Sun Fire Insurance, for which he printed the ‘British Mercury,’ and subsequently the ‘Historical Register’ (1716–38), the estimable precursor of the ‘Gentleman's Magazine;’ the ‘Register’ was his private enterprise from 1721 onwards. In October 1719 Hugh Meres commenced issuing a new daily paper, the ‘Daily Post’ (1719–71), and in September 1722 he started the ‘British Journal,’ which distinguished itself by its denunciations of the South Sea promoters. Hugh Meres died 19 April 1723, but his business passed entire into the hands of his widow, Cassandra, until her death in February 1726. It passed then into the hands of the daughter's husband, Richard Nutt (1694–1780), who started in December 1727 the ‘London Evening Post.’ It was this paper, which for a time distanced all its daily rivals, that John Meres came to direct in 1737. Meres, who seems to have become partner in all Nutt's enterprises and ultimately sole manager of them, took up his abode in the Old Bailey, dropped the ‘Historical Register,’ and devoted himself to the newspaper, which he carried on side by side with the ‘Daily Post,’ the imprint on both journals being ‘printed for John Meres.’ He was imprisoned for ten weeks in 1740 for passing some remarks upon an act of parliament dealing with the provision trade, and in 1745 he unwarily exposed himself to Fielding's attacks in the ‘Jacobite Journal’ by his high-flying and barely concealed Jacobite tendencies. In 1754 the ‘Evening Post’ published a letter reflecting on the government, and on 10 July