Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/438

 la Société d'Encouragement, 1873, p. 84), it appears to owe its properties to the presence of about 8 per cent. of tungsten.

Mushet was of a very self-contained and reliant disposition. ‘I was never inside any steel works but my own,’ he says, ‘and never even saw the outside of one except that of the Avonside Steel Works in Bristol;’ nor did he ever visit Sheffield, the centre of the steel industry. From about 1848 and onwards he was a very constant correspondent of the ‘Mining Journal.’ In 1857–8 he wrote a series of letters to that paper on the Bessemer process under the signature ‘Sideros’ while carrying on a correspondence under his own name. In 1856 he read a paper before the British Association ‘On an Ancient Miner's Axe discovered in the Forest of Dean’ (Reports, p. 71). His work on ‘The Bessemer-Mushet Process’ (1883) was put forth in 1883 in order ‘that there may no longer be any doubt regarding the relation, the nature, and the value of the two processes which constitute the Bessemer-Mushet combined or binary processes of manufacturing cheap steel.’

He died on 19 Jan. 1891 at Cheltenham, aged 79, after many years of enfeebled health, leaving a widow and two sons, Henry Charles Brooklyn Mushet and Edward Maxwell Mushet, who were engaged as managers to a firm of steel-makers at Sheffield. There is a portrait from a photograph in the possession of the Iron and Steel Institute in the ‘Engineering Review’ 20 July 1893, p. 7.

[Mushet's Bessemer-Mushet Process, 1883; Jeans's Creators of the Age of Steel, 1884, pp. 60–5; Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 1876, pp. 1–4; private information.]

 MUSHET, WILLIAM (1716–1792), physician, was born in 1716 at Dublin of a Jacobite family, who had fled thither from Stirling. He is supposed to have been educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and was entered at Leyden on 26 Aug. 1745 (, Index, p. 72). Mushet was also a member of King's College, Cambridge, and proceeded M.D. there in 1746, becoming a candidate of the College of Physicians on 4 April 1748 and a fellow on 20 March 1749. He delivered in 1751 the Gulstonian lectures. He was made physician in chief to the forces, and served at the battle of Minden (1759), but declined an offer of a baronetcy for his services in that campaign.

Mushet was intimately connected with the Duke of Rutland, and had apartments for eleven years at Belvoir Castle. He died at York on 11 Dec. 1792. A monument was erected to his memory by his daughter Mary in the church of St. Mary Castlegate, York, with a long inscription written by Sir Robert Sinclair, recorder of York.  MUSKERRY,. [See, d. 1536, Irish chieftain ; and under, fourth , 1668-1734.]

MUSKET, alias, GEORGE (1583–1645), catholic divine, son of Thomas Fisher and Magdalene Ashton, was born in 1583 at Barton, Northamptonshire. His father was of the middle class, and his mother of high family. He was educated for three years partly at Barton and partly at Stilton, and subsequently for about half a year in Wisbech Castle, where he was an attendant on the incarcerated priests, though evidently as a volunteer, and where in 1597 he was converted to the catholic religion (, Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, ii. 266, 267). Two of his brothers were also converted about the same time, viz. Richard, who ultimately joined the Society of Jesus, and Thomas, who became a secular priest. George proceeded to the English College of Douay, and was formally reconciled to the Roman catholic church. He continued his studies there for four years, and was then sent to the English College at Rome, where he was admitted 21 Oct. 1601. He took the college oath 3 Nov. 1602, was ordained priest 11 March 1605-6, and was sent to England in May 1607, but he appears to have been detained at Douay, where he was engaged for upwards of a year in teaching theology.

On 9 Sept. 1608 he left Douay for the English mission. He resided for the most part in London, and Dodd says it was the general belief that 'no missioner ever took greater pains, or reconciled more persons to the Catholic church' (Church History, iii. 98). He was very dexterous in managing conferences between representatives of his own co-religionists and protestants, and gave a remarkable instance of his polemical capacity on 21 and 22 April 1621, when he and John Fisher [q. v.] the Jesuit held a disputation with Dr. Daniel Featley [q. v.] and Dr. Thomas Goad [q. v.] In the reign of Charles I he was in confinement for many years. On 6 Jan. 1626-7 secretaries Conway and Coke issued a warrant for the apprehension of him and of Dr. Smith, bishop of Chalcedon, and there is a list, dated 22 March 1626-7, of 'Popish books and other things belonging to Popery,' taken in the house of William Sharples in Queen's Street, St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, presumed to belong to ' Mr. Fisher, otherwise Mr. Muskett.' A memorandum,