Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/253

 suspected his action, and, when he left Paris, secretly on 25 April for Lyons, plotted to assassinate him. He got safely out of France, however, and travelled for a year in Italy and Germany. Meanwhile Mason, Petre, and Wotton made intercession for him in England, and in March 1555 he was permitted to return, and no further proceedings were taken against him.

It was not till 1558 that he was again employed. In March of that year he was directed to repair to Philip at Brussels and then to negotiate in Germany for three thousand men for the queen's service in defence of Calais. In October he was at Dunkirk, ‘sick with the burning ague.’ He did not return till after Elizabeth's accession, in May 1559. From that time he lived quietly at Pickering House, in the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, London; but, being ‘a brave, wise, comely English gentleman,’ was seriously thought of as a suitor for Elizabeth's hand. In 1559 ‘the Earl of Arundel … was said to have sold his lands and was ready to flee out of the realm with the money, because he could not abide in England if the queen should marry Mr. Pickering, for they were enemies’ (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1559–1560, p. 2). In 1569 he was appointed one of the lieutenants of London ‘to put the kingdom in readiness to resist the rebels in the north,’ and in 1570 he was on the special commission which tried John Felton [q. v.] for treason.

He died unmarried on 4 Jan. 1574–5, and was buried on the north side of the chancel of Great St. Helen's Church, London, where a handsome tomb, with recumbent effigy, was raised to his memory; his father's body was disinterred and buried with him. By his will, dated 31 Dec. 1574, he bequeathed to Cecil his papers, antiquities, globes, compasses, and horse called ‘Bawle Price.’ He requested that his library should not be dispersed, but go to whoever married his illegitimate daughter Hester. She subsequently married Sir Edward Wotton, son of the ambassador.

[Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. passim; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII; Hist. MSS. Comm. Hatfield MSS. i. 85, 105, 118, 121, 257, 443; Harleian, Lansdowne, and Addit. MSS. in Brit. Mus. passim; Sadler's State Papers, ii. 140; Proc. Privy Council passim; Rymer's Fœdera, xv. 274, 326; Official Return Memb. of Parl.; Lit. Remains of Edw. VI (Roxburghe Club) passim; Zurich Letters, i. 24, 34; Strype's Works, Index; Lloyd's State Worthies, edit. 1766, i. 415–16; Archæologia, xxv. 382; Archæol. Cambrensis, iv. 22–6; Athenæ Cantabr. i. 325–6, 562; Burnet's Hist. of Reformation; Burgon's Life and Times of Gresham, i. 147, 157, 158, 165, ii. 383, 457, 459, 460; Aikin's Court of Elizabeth, ii. 298; Tytler's England under Edward VI and Mary, i. 406, ii. 86, 176; Wheatley's London, Past and Present, ii. 204; Froude's Hist. of England; Hinds's Age of Elizabeth, pp. 74, 77–8, 82.]  PICKERING, WILLIAM (1796–1854), publisher, born on 2 April 1796, was in 1810 apprenticed to John and Arthur Arch, quaker publishers and booksellers of Cornhill. In 1820 he set up for himself in a small shop at 31 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and made the acquaintance of Basil Montagu and of Thomas Rodd, who encouraged in him a natural aptitude for the study of literature. His original intention was to devote himself to the sale of rare manuscripts and old books. But publishing had greater attractions for him, and he made a first venture as a publisher by issuing between 1821 and 1831 reprints of classical authors in a series of miniature volumes in 48mo or 32mo. The series was known as the ‘Diamond Classics.’ The twenty-four volumes included the works of Shakespeare (9 vols.), Horace, Virgil, Terence, Catullus, Cicero (‘De Officiis’), Dante, Tasso, Petrarch, Walton (‘Lives’ and ‘Compleat Angler’), and Milton's ‘Paradise Lost.’ Pickering also added in a beautiful Greek text—the first specimen of a diamond Greek type—the Greek Testament, and the works of Homer. The typographical delicacy of the volumes caused them to be highly prized. Those that appeared before 1829 were printed by Charles Whittingham the elder at the Chiswick Press. In 1829 Pickering began a long intimacy with the elder Whittingham's nephew Charles, who had in the previous year started business on his own account in Took's Court, Chancery Lane. Henceforth the younger Whittingham was the chief printer employed by Pickering; in 1838 he succeeded his uncle as proprietor of the Chiswick Press.

In 1824 Pickering had removed to larger premises at 57 Chancery Lane. In 1825 he first began to bind his books in boards, covered with cotton cloth dyed various colours, instead of with paper. In 1834 he issued an interesting catalogue of manuscripts and of rare and curious books on sale at his shop. The entries numbered 4326. Meanwhile his growing publishing business was solely devoted to the highest branches of literature, of which his personal knowledge and appreciation were alike extensive and sound. About 1830 he had adopted the familiar trademark of the famous Aldine press (an anchor entwined with a dolphin), and the legend ‘Aldi Discip. Anglvs.’ The taste he displayed in his publications proved him a worthy disciple of the great Italian master. Another device