Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/332

Oswald of the world (ib. p. lxvi). All this points to Oswald as the author; the preface is not quite intact, and the injured passages of the manuscript may have contained a record of the author's relationship to the saint. It has been suggested by Lord Selborne that he compiled the MS. 265 at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, called the Worcester MS., to which a later hand has prefixed the title 'Liber penitentialis Egberti' (, Catalogue Librorum, p. 310). The manuscript belonged to Worcester, and could only have been compiled by one who had access to foreign libraries, and in all probability the library of Fleury. Leland calls Oswald a monk of Worcester, but the 'Ramsey Chronicle' shows Oswald to have been connected with Ramsey rather than Worcester.

 OSWALD (d. 1437), Carthusian, whose full name seems to have been Oswald de Corda, was, according to Bale, an Englishman who became a Carthusian at Paris, and afterwards propagated his order in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Bower, who calls him 'prior Alemannæ' (or 'Alemannus'), says that he was a man of great learning and sanctity. In 1429 James I of Scotland made him first prior of the Charterhouse at Perth. Oswald died on 15 Sept. 1437. A variety of works are attributed to him; among them are letters to Jean Gerson, who was his friend, and some of whose writings he is said to have translated into Latin. The Portiforium mentioned by Tanner as extant in MS. C.C.C. Cambridge, 391, is really an eleventh-century manuscript which was presented by St. Oswald (d. 972) [q. v.] to Worcester (, Catalogue).

 OSWALD, JAMES (1715–1769), politician, eldest son of James Oswald, M.P. for Kirkcaldy 1702–7, and for Kirkcaldy Burghs 1713–15, was born at Dunnikier, Dysart, Fifeshire, in 1715. He was educated at the grammar school, Kirkcaldy (where he had for one of his schoolfellows Adam Smith); was admitted a student at Lincoln's Inn on 13 Dec. 1733, and, after making a prolonged tour on the continent, was called to the Scottish bar in 1740. He did not practise, and on 2 June 1741 was returned to parliament for Kirkcaldy Burghs, which he continued to represent until 1768, with the exception of 1747–54, during which he sat for Fifeshire. A strong whig, he voted against the hiring of the Hanoverian troops (10 Dec. 1742), and on the formation of the ‘broad bottom’ administration received the office of Scottish commissioner of the navy (December 1744). His speeches, though mostly confined to business matters, were always remarkably able. Horace Walpole praises the ‘quickness and strength of argument’ which made him a match for Henry Fox. He evinced his independence by supporting, on 28 Oct. 1745, Hume Campbell's motion for an inquiry into the causes and progress of the Jacobite insurrection, the entire responsibility for which he laid at the door of ministers, and by coquetting with the Leicester House party. From December 1751 to December 1759 he sat on the board of trade, and from 22 Dec. 1759 to 15 April 1763 on the treasury board. On 4 May in the latter year he was appointed joint vice-treasurer in Ireland, having previously (20 April) been sworn of the privy council. He retired from public life in ill-health in 1766, and died at Hammersmith on 24 March 1769.

Oswald was an able and industrious public servant, and a man of literary and philosophical tastes. He was a close friend and an amiable critic of Adam Smith, David Hume, Henry Home, Lord Kames, and John Home, the author of ‘Douglas.’ He married at London, in February 1747, a sister of Joseph Townsend, M.P. for Westbury, Wiltshire, by whom he had issue James Townsend Oswald, father of General Sir John Oswald [q. v.]

 OSWALD, JOHN (d. 1793), poet and republican, was a native of Edinburgh, where his mother is said to have kept John's coffee-