Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/388

 1603] … coppied by Sir Tho. Overbury,’ but its ascription to Overbury may well be doubted.

A portrait in the picture gallery at Oxford is said to represent Overbury, and to be the work of Isaac Oliver [q. v.] A very rare print by Robert Elstracke is inscribed in a corner ‘The Portraiture of Sir Thomas Overbury, knight, ætat. 32,’ and shows him in the act of writing out his epitaph. It is reproduced in Amos's ‘Great Oyer of Poisoning,’ 1846 (frontispiece). The engraving, by Simon Pass, which appears in the 1614 4to edition of ‘The Wife,’ has been reproduced in later issues.

Overbury's nephew, the younger (d. 1683), was son of his next brother, Sir Giles, by Anne (d. 1660), daughter of Sir John Shurfield of Isfield, Sussex. He settled on the estate of Bourton-on-the-Hill after proving his father's will in 1653, and was knighted on 25 June 1660. He was a country gentleman who, according to Wood, ‘was a great traveller beyond the seas, and afterwards a favourer of protestant dissenters.’ In 1676 he issued, in the form of a letter to Thomas Shirley, a doctor of medicine in London, ‘A true and perfect Account of the Examination, Confession, Trial, Condemnation, and Execution of Joan Perry and her two Sons for the supposed Murder of William Harrison, Gent.’ Harrison, who was steward to the Viscountess Campden at Campden, was a neighbour of Overbury, and on 16 Aug. 1660 disappeared mysteriously, whereupon his servant, John Perry, asserted that he, with his mother and brother, had murdered his master. Although John's story was wholly uncorroborated, the three persons incriminated were arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged; but subsequently Harrison returned home, stating that he had been kidnapped and been sold as a slave in Turkey. The curious tract is reprinted in the Harleian ‘Miscellany’ (1810, viii. 86 sq.; cf. Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 64). Overbury also published anonymously ‘Queries proposed to the serious Consideration of those who impose upon others in Things of Divine and Supernatural Revelation, and persecute any upon the account of Religion,’ 1677. To this tract George Vernon, rector of Bourton-on-the-Water, replied in ‘Ataxiæ Obstaculum, an Answer to certain Queries dispersed in some parts of Gloucestershire,’ 1677. Overbury retorted in ‘Ratiocinium Vernaculum,’ 1678. Late in life he sold his property at Bourton and removed to Quinton. He was buried at Quinton on 6 March 1683. By his wife Hester Leach he left a daughter Mary, who married at Bourton in 1659 Sir William Whitelocke. 

OVEREND, MARMADUKE (d. 1790), organist and composer, was a pupil of Dr. William Boyce. In 1760 he was organist of Isleworth, Middlesex, where he died in 1790. He was buried on 25 June (Parish Register).

Overend published: 1. ‘Epithalamium,’ for solo and chorus, with instrumental accompaniments, 1760. 2. ‘Twelve Sonatas,’ for two violins and violoncello, ‘the basses of which are correctly figured for the accompaniment on the harpsichord.’ 3. A canon for eight voices, ‘Glory be to the Father.’ 4. ‘A Brief Account of, and an Introduction to, eight Lectures in the Science of Music,’ 1781. It does not appear that the lectures were delivered, and the pamphlet contains only a method of finding musical ratios, by strings represented by straight lines or numbers. The process by which the calculations are made, and ‘the radical sources of melody and harmony explained,’ was to be developed in the course of the lectures. Dr. Boyce's manuscript treatise of composition, then in the hands of Overend, formed the basis of the system proposed. 

 OVERSTONE,. [See, 1796–1883.]

 OVERTON, CHARLES (1805–1889), divine, sixth son of John Overton (1763-1838) [q. v.], rector of St. Margaret's and St. Crux, was born in York in 1805. He was 