Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/296

 Haydn, Mozart, Clari, Leo, and Carissimi, with a separate arrangement for pianoforte or organ,’ about 1825. 3. ‘Four Double Chants, the Responses to the Commandments, as performed at King's College, Cambridge,’ 8vo, no date. Some of Pratt's manuscripts are in the Rochester Cathedral library.

[Grove's Dict. ii. 422, iii. 26; Cambridge Chron. 10 March 1855; authorities cited.] 

PRATT, JOHN BURNETT (1799–1869), Scottish divine and antiquary, born in 1799 at Cairnbanno, New Deer, was son of a working tradesman. After graduating M.A. at Aberdeen University, he took orders in the Scottish episcopal church, and obtained a living at Stuartfield in 1821. In 1825 he was elected to St. James's Church, Cruden, where he remained till his death. He was also examining chaplain to the bishop of Aberdeen and domestic chaplain to the Earl of Errol. Aberdeen University conferred on him the honorary degree of LL.D. in 1865. He died at Cruden on 20 March 1869.

Besides editing the ‘Scottish Episcopal Communion Service’ in 1866, he was the author of: 1. ‘The Old Paths, where is the Good Way,’ 3rd edit. Oxford, 1840. 2. ‘Buchan,’ 8vo, Aberdeen, 1858; 3rd edit., with a memoir, 1870; this work embodied the results of many years of antiquarian and topographical research in the district. 3. ‘The Druids,’ 8vo, London, 1861. 4. ‘Letters on the Scandinavian Churches, their Doctrine, Worship, and Polity,’ 8vo, London, 1865. 5. ‘Scottish Episcopacy and Scottish Episcopalians. Three Sermons,’ 8vo, Aberdeen, 1838.

[Memoir by A. Pratt, appended to Buchan, 3rd edit.; Aberdeen Free Press, 23 March 1869; Fraserburgh Advertiser, 26 March 1869; Cooper's Biogr. Register, 1869, i. 398; m'Clintock and Strong's Cyclop. of Theol. and Eccles. Literature.] 

PRATT, JOHN JEFFREYS, second and first  (1759–1840), born on 11 Feb. 1759, was the eldest child and only son of Charles, first earl of Camden [q. v.], and Elizabeth, daughter of Nicholas Jeffreys. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and received the degree of M.A. in 1779. At the general election in the following year he was returned for Bath, of which city he was recorder; he continued to represent Bath as long as he remained a commoner. As a reward for his father's services, he was in 1780 appointed one of the tellers of the exchequer, and held that office for the extraordinary period of sixty years. An unsuccessful attempt was made on 7 May 1812 to limit the emoluments accruing to that office, which had increased from 2,500l. per annum in 1782 to 23,000l. in 1808. From that moment Camden relinquished all income arising from it, amounting at the time of his death to upwards of a quarter of a million sterling, and received the formal thanks of parliament for his patriotic conduct. He was a lord of the admiralty from 13 July 1782 till 8 April 1783, during the administration of Earl Shelburne, and again in that of Pitt, from 30 Dec. following to 6 July 1783. On 8 April 1789 he was appointed a lord of the treasury, and held office till May 1794. He was admitted a privy councillor on 21 June 1793, and succeeded his father in the peerage on 18 April 1794. On 11 March 1795 he was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland vice Earl Fitzwilliam [see, second ].

To the Irish generally, who saw in his appointment the frustration of all those hopes of remedial legislation to which the short-lived administration of Earl Fitzwilliam had given birth, he was from the first unpopular. He arrived in Ireland on 31 March 1795, and was greeted by a riot. Personally opposed to catholic emancipation, and to any concession to the popular demand for parliamentary reform, he must share with the English cabinet and his advisers in Ireland the responsibility attaching to that disastrous line of policy which terminated so fatally three years later in the rebellion of 1798. Resolved to present an uncompromising front to the catholic claims, he hoped by a system of state-endowed education to diminish the influence of the catholic priesthood and to render them more subservient to the crown. Apparently his object was realised in the rejection of the catholic bill of 1795, and the foundation of Maynooth College, the first stone of which he laid himself. It was not long before he realised that ‘the quiet of the country depended upon the exertions of the friends of the established government backed by a strong military force.’ Only a few weeks after his arrival, Theobald Wolfe Tone [q. v.] sailed for America, and the society of United Irishmen, of which Tone was the founder, was reconstructed on a new and purely revolutionary basis. To this danger was added the rapid spread of defenderism. Camden was thus driven to adopt a system of espionage and a policy of sheer repression. The formation of a loyal orange society seemed to furnish a guarantee of peace. But the countenance shown to the orangemen led to fresh disturbances, especially in co. Armagh; and, though Camden