Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/300

 Winslow, Hemel Hempstead, and Leighton Buzzard, that witches were to be tried by ducking at Longmarstone on 22 April 1751. A large and determined mob mustered at Tring on the day specified, and forced the parish overseer and master of the workhouse by threats to reveal the hiding-place of the unfortunate couple in the vestry of the church, where those officers had placed them for better security. The Osbornes were then stripped, and, with their hands tied to their toes, were thrown into Longmarstone pool. After much ducking and ill-usage the old woman was thrown upon the bank, quite naked and almost choked with mud, and she expired in the course of a few minutes. Her dead body was tied to her husband, who was alleged to have died shortly afterwards from the cruel treatment he received, but who ultimately recovered, though he was unable to give evidence at the trial. The authorities determined to overawe local sympathy with the rioters, and to make a salutary example. At the coroner's inquest the jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder against one Thomas Colley, a chimney-sweep, and against twenty-one other known and unknown persons. Colley had taken a leading part in the outrage, and had collected money from the rabble for 'the sport he had shown them in ducking the old witch.' He was tried at Hertford assizes on 30 July 1751, before Sir Thomas Lee, and his plea that he went into the pond as a friend to try and save Mrs. Osborne being unsupported by evidence, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was escorted from Hertford gaol to St. Albans by two troops of horseguards blue, and the next morning, 24 Aug., was executed at Gubblecut Cross in Tring, and afterwards hanged in chains on the same gallows. 'The infatuation of the greatest part of the country people was so great that they would not be spectators of his death; yet many thousands stood at a distance to see him go, grumbling and muttering that it was a hard case to hang a man for destroying an old wicked woman that had done so much harm by her witchcraft.' It is noticeable that the last case of a witch being condemned by the verdict of an English jury, that of [q. v.], also occurred in Hertfordshire in 1712.



OSBORNE, SIDNEY GODOLPHIN (1808–1889), philanthropist, third son of Francis Godolphin Osborne, baron Godolphin (1777–1850), by Elizabeth Charlotte Eden, daughter of William, first baron Auckland, was born at Stapleford in Cambridgeshire on 5 Feb. 1808. He was a direct descendant of Godolphin, the fellow-minister of the Duke of Marlborough, and when in 1859 his elder brother, George Godolphin, succeeded his cousin, Francis Godolphin D'Arcy Osborne, as eighth Duke of Leeds, he obtained the rank of a duke's son. He was educated at Rugby and at Brasenose College, Oxford, whence he graduated B.A. in 1830, and, having taken orders, was appointed rector of Stoke-Poges in Buckinghamshire in 1832. In 1841 he accepted the living of Durweston in Dorset, which was in the gift of Lord Portman, and he occupied that incumbency until 1875. He then resigned the benefice and retired to Lewes, where he died on 9 May 1889. He married in 1834 Emily, daughter of Pascoe Grenfell of Taplow Court, Buckinghamshire, and was thus brother-in-law of Charles Kingsley and James Anthony Froude. His wife died on 19 Dec. 1875, leaving two sons and two daughters.

Osborne is chiefly known in connection with the series of 'lay sermons' delivered from the pulpit of the 'Times' newspaper under the signature 'S. G. O.' A philanthropist of a militant and almost ferocious type, he was always lashing abuses and provoking controversy. But the value of much that he wrote is attested by the fact that it has gained in historical that which it has lost in controversial interest. In matters so diverse as free trade, education, sanitation, women's rights, cattle plague, and cholera, he was equally at home, and, generally speaking, in advance of his time. During the Crimean war he journeyed to the East, made an unofficial inspection of the hospitals under Miss Florence Nightingale's care, and published the results in 'Scutari and its Hospitals,' 1855. He was publicly thanked in parliament for his self-appointed task. On the Irish question, in which he took a special interest in consequence of his visit to the west of Ireland during the famine of 1849, he was a strong unionist, and in church matters he regarded sacerdotal claims with frank and cynical dislike. But his special interest was perhaps the agricultural labourer, of whom his knowledge was unrivalled, while his forecast of