Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/161

  [Wright's pref. to Neckam's De Naturis Rerum, &c. p. 503 (Rolls Ser.); Wright's Biog. Brit. Lit. ii. 449–59; there is nothing additional in the short notice in Morley's English Writers, iii. 196; Bale's Scriptt. Cat. pt. i. p. 272, ed. 1587; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. (list of works); Hardy's Cat. Mat. iii. 57, 58 (Rolls Ser.); Du Boulay's Hist. Univ. Paris. ii. 427, 725; Hist. Litt. de France, xviii. 521; Peter of Blois' Epist. 137; Gesta Abbatum Mon. S. Albani. i. 196 (Rolls Ser.); Annals of Tewkesbury, an. 1217, of Dunstable, an. 1213, of Worcester, an. 1217, ap. Ann. Monastici, i. 63, ii. 40, iv. 409 (Rolls Ser.)] 

NECTON or NECHODUN, HUMPHREY (d. 1303), Carmelite, was a native of Norfolk according to Leland, of Suffolk according to Bale. He joined the Carmelite order while it was new in England. Devoting himself to study, he went to Cambridge in 1259, and was the first Carmelite who took the degree of doctor of theology there. His preaching against heretics in the schools and to the populace met with praise (, Harl. MS. 3838, f. 53 b). He was chaplain to William de Luda, bishop of Ely (1294–8) (, vi. 49). He died and was buried in the Carmelite house at Norwich 1303 (, MS. loc. cit.) His works, according to Bale, were: 1. Fourteen ‘Sermones Dominicales,’ or ‘Sacræ Conciones,’ in one book, beginning ‘Omne debitum dimisi tibi,’ which some attribute to John Foulsham (see, Comment. ii. 346). 2. ‘Quæstiones ordinariæ,’ in one book. 3. ‘Lecturæ Scholasticæ,’ in one book. 4. ‘Super articulis theologicis,’ in one book. No copies of these works are known to exist.

[Pits, De Angliæ Scriptoribus, p. 388; Bale's Scriptorum Catalogus, iv. 24; Tanner's Bibliotheca, p. 542; Leland's Commentarii de Scriptoribus, ii. 313.] 

NEEDHAM, CHARLES, fourth (d. 1660), descended from Thomas, elder brother of Sir John Needham [q. v.], was second son of Robert (d. 1653), second viscount, by his second wife, Eleanor, daughter of Thomas Dutton of Dutton, Cheshire, and widow of Gilbert, lord Gerard of Gerard's Bromley, Staffordshire. He succeeded to the title in January 1657 on the death, without issue, of his brother Robert, third viscount, who had three years previously surrendered to him his interest in the family estates at Shavington, Shropshire. He was a staunch royalist, and these estates suffered in consequence by sequestration and otherwise (cf. Act of Parliament for the Payment of the Debts of Charles, late Lord Viscount Kilmorey, 29 Charles II, ch. v.). In August 1659 he joined with Sir George Booth and the Earl of Derby in an attempt to restore Charles to the throne, which was defeated by General Lambert [q. v.]; and Lord Kilmorey was taken prisoner to London, where he died suddenly the following year.

He married, in February 1654, Bridget, eldest daughter of Sir William Drury of Drury House, London (which occupied the site of the present Drury Lane theatre), and Beesthorpe, Norfolk, by whom he had five sons (Charles, who died in infancy; Robert and Thomas, who succeeded to the family honours as fifth and sixth viscounts respectively; Byron, and a second Charles) and one daughter. His widow remarried Sir John Shaw, bart. His descendant, Francis Jack Needham, twelfth viscount Kilmorey, is noticed separately.

[Case and Pedigree of Robert viscount Killmorey on Claim to vote at Elections of Irish Peers, April 1813; Harrod's Hist. of Shavington, pp. 90 et seq.; Lodge's Peerage, iv. 224; information kindly supplied by W. H. Weldon, esq., Windsor Herald.] 

NEEDHAM, ELIZABETH, commonly known as ‘Mother Needham’ (d. 1731), a notorious procuress, kept a house in Park Place, near St. James's Street. She is said to have been employed by the infamous Colonel Charteris [see ], and in ‘Don Francisco's Descent into the Infernal Regions’—a satire published upon Charteris's death in February 1732—she is represented as proposing in hell to marry the colonel, much to the latter's horror and disgust. She is represented in the first plate of Hogarth's ‘Harlot's Progress,’ in the courtyard of the Bell Inn, Wood Street, cajoling with flattering promises the then innocent Kate Hackabout on her first arrival in London. She is depicted as a middle-aged woman, simpering beneath her patches, and well dressed in silk. The male figure leaning on his stick, and leering at the maid from the inn door, is supposed to represent Charteris himself, while behind him stands his factotum, Jack Gourlay. In spite of pertinacious efforts made to screen her, Mother Needham was committed to the Gate House on 24 March 1731, convicted of keeping a disorderly house on 29 April, and ordered to stand in the pillory over against Park Place on 30 April 1731. She is described in the contemporary journals as lying upon the pillory on her face; notwithstanding which evasion of the law, and the diligence of a number of beadles and other persons who had been paid to protect her, she was so severely pelted by the mob that her life was despaired of. She actually died on 3 May 1731, declaring that what most affected her was the terror of standing in the