Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/12

 Clerks, ‘The Conscript,’ ‘The Female Volunteer,’ ‘The Ourang Outang,’ ‘The Truand Chief,’ ‘The First of September,’ ‘The Idiot of Heidelberg,’ ‘The Lion King,’ ‘The Scapegrace of Paris,’ and very many burlesques. He claimed to have left behind thirty unacted plays, which he trusted would be given after his death for the benefit of his widow and three children, otherwise unprovided for. Up to his death he was, with Charles Mathews and Mme. Vestris, playing in ‘A Game of Speculation’ and the ‘Prince of Happy Land.’ His death, through lung disease, augmented by somewhat festive habits, took place on 29 Feb. 1852. By a curious and painful will, printed in the ‘Era’ for 21 March 1852, and written four days before he died, he left such property as he possessed to Charles Melville, a tragic actor better known in the country than in London, in trust for his children. He expressed many wishes concerning his funeral which were not observed; asked that his heart might be preserved in some medical museum as a specimen of a broken one, hoped that a benefit might be given him to pay his debts, which were moderate; and left messages of farewell to many well-known actors.

Oxberry is responsible for ‘Oxberry's Weekly Budget of Plays,’ fol. 1843–4, consisting of thirty-nine plays edited by him; and ‘Oxberry's Dramatic Chronology;’ 8vo [1850]. This work, which is of little value or authority, was announced to be continued annually. A portrait as Peter White in ‘Mrs. White’ accompanies a memoir in the ‘Theatrical Times’ for 20 Feb. 1847 (ii. 49).

[Works cited. The list of his characters is principally derived from the Dramatic and Musical Review, 1842 et seq.; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. vol. v.]  OXBURGH, HENRY (d. 1716), Jacobite, was a member of a Roman catholic family of Irish origin. He was born in Ireland, and served for a short period in James II's army, being a captain in the regiment of his kinsman, Sir Heward Oxburgh of Bovin, King's County; but he migrated to France in 1696, and took service under Louis XIV. He returned to England about 1700, and purchased an estate in Lancashire. Retaining strong Stuart predilections, he was unwilling to forego the hopes with which the aspect of affairs during the last years of Anne's reign had inspired the Jacobite party. In the spring of 1715 it was understood that he was to hold a command in the English contingent of Mar's Jacobite army. Early in October the Jacobite general in England, the incompetent Thomas Forster [q. v.], granted him a colonel's commission in the name of the Pretender. After joining the Scottish contingent at Rothbury on 19 Oct., and dispersing, without bloodshed or violence, the posse comitatus which had mustered, some twenty thousand strong, under the Earl of Carlisle, the small Jacobite force under Forster and Derwentwater [see, third , (1686–1716)] occupied the small town of Penrith. Thence a party was detached under Oxburgh to Lowther Hall to search for arms, and, if possible, to seize Viscount Lonsdale. The latter had discreetly left the mansion in the care of two aged women. Neither there nor at Hornby Castle, the seat of the notorious Colonel Francis Charteris [q .v.], whither Oxburgh conducted a foraging party on 9 Nov., were any depredations committed. An inferior British force under General Wills, subsequently reinforced by General Carpenter, was encountered at Preston, and Forster promptly surrendered all notion of further resistance. On 13 Nov. he sent Oxburgh to negotiate the capitulation of the town. Oxburgh proposed that the insurgents should lay down their arms as prisoners of war, but he found Wills by no means inclined to treat. He would not enter upon terms with rebels. After entreaty, Wills only relented so far as to promise that if the rebels would lay down their arms to surrender at discretion, he would protect them from being cut to pieces until he received further orders from the government. This sturdy officer had only one thousand men under his command; nevertheless the rebels, numbering 462 English and 1088 Scots, were finally induced by Forster to accept these terms, and in the course of the day laid down their arms. Colonel Oxburgh was conveyed, with the other Jacobite officers, to London, and committed to the Marshalsea prison. He was arraigned on 7 May 1716, and, after a purely formal defence, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on Monday, 14 May 1716. The fact of his head being displayed upon one of the spikes on the top of Temple Bar provoked much indignation among the tories, and caused a certain amount of reaction in the popular feeling towards the remaining Jacobite prisoners. In the document which he left in the hands of the sheriff at the time of his execution, Oxburgh stated: ‘I might have hoped from the great character Mr. Wills gave me at Preston (when I treated with him for a surrender) of the clemency of the Prince now on the throne (to which, he said, we could not better entitle ourselves than by an early submission) that such as surrendered themselves Prisoners at Discretion, on that Prospect, would have met with more lenity than I have experienced, and I believe England is the only country in Europe where Prisoners at Dis-