Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/334

 and in the same year appeared his ‘Series of .... Observations .... on Salisbury Cathedral,’ 4to; another edition in 1787. It also contains a description of Old Sarum, and is the result of a survey made by direction of Thomas Sherlock [q. v.] (successively bishop of Salisbury and London), to whom it is dedicated. This work forms the basis of many subsequent descriptions of the architecture of the cathedral; it is embodied almost entire in ‘A Description of Salisbury Cathedral,’ 1774, and is largely quoted in Dodsworth's ‘Salisbury Cathedral,’ 1796.

[Works in Brit. Mus. Libr.; Dodsworth's Salisbury Cathedral, pp. 16–17, 29, 30, &c.; Gent. Mag. 1753, p. 148; Dictionary of Architecture; Builder, 1873, p. 765.]  PRICE, HUGH (1495?–1574), founder of Jesus College, Oxford, was the son of Rees ap Rees, a butcher, who ‘acquired such a fortune as to enable him to give his children a liberal education, and to leave to his eldest son a considerable landed estate.’ Hugh was born at Brecon about 1495, and educated at Oxford, where he graduated B.C.L. on 4 July 1512, B. Canon L. on 23 Feb. 1523–4, and D. Canon L. on 2 July 1526. On 26 April 1532 he was one of those who tried James Bainham [q. v.] for heresy in the Tower of London, and he may be the Hugh Price alias Whiteford who was presented by the king to the living of Whitford, Flintshire, on 22 Jan. 1535–6. On the re-foundation of the see of Rochester in 1541 he was appointed to the first prebend, which he held till his death in August 1574. From 1571 to 1574 he was treasurer of St. David's. He was buried in the priory church at Brecon in August 1574.

On Price's petition, and by letters patent dated 27 June 1571, Elizabeth established Jesus College, Oxford, and conferred on it all the lands, buildings, and personalty of White Hall. Price himself gave 60l. as a yearly endowment. It was the first distinctly protestant college founded at Oxford. The buildings were commenced about 1572, but only two stories on the east and south sides of the outer quadrangle were completed until 1618. A portrait of Price attributed to Holbein belongs to the college. It was engraved by George Vertue in 1739, and appears in Jones's ‘History of Brecknockshire.’ The arms adopted by the college are not those of Price (cf. English Hist. Rev. 1895 passim).

[Letters and Papers Henry VIII, v. App. No. 29, (3), x. No. 226; Le Neve's Fasti, i. 318, ii. 582; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Wood's Fasti, i. 70; Jones's Hist. of Brecknockshire i. 123–5; Granger's Biogr. Hist. i. 214; Elizabethan Oxford (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), pp. 15, 241; The Colleges of Oxford, ed. Clark, pp. 365–6; Williams's Eminent Welshmen; Imp. Dict. of Biogr.; Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits.]  PRICE, JAMES (1752–1783), chemist, son of James Higginbotham, was born in London in 1752. He entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, matriculating on 15 April 1772, and proceeding M.A. (21 Nov. 1777). Early in 1781 he changed his name to Price, in accordance with the will of a relative who had bequeathed him a fortune (London Med. Journ. 1784, iv. 317). On 10 May 1781 he was elected to the Royal Society, being described in the certificate of recommendation as ‘well versed in various branches of Natural Science, and particularly in Chymistry.’ On 2 July 1782 the degree of M.D. was conferred on him by the university of Oxford, ‘on account of chemical labours’ (, Experiments on Mercury, &c., 2nd ed. Introd.)

In 1782 Price decided to repeat before witnesses certain experiments ssimilar to those of the alchemists. Between 7 May and 25 May 1782 he performed, at his laboratory at Stoke, near Guildford, seven experiments, by which it appeared that he possessed a white powder capable of converting fifty times its own weight of mercury into silver, and a red powder capable of converting sixty times its own weight of mercury into gold; the substances being heated together in a crucible with a flux of borax or nitre, or both, and stirred with an iron rod. The witnesses included Lords Onslow, King, and Palmerston, and other men of social, though none of great scientific, rank. The gold and silver alleged to be produced were found genuine on assay, and were exhibited before George III. Price related the experiments in detail in ‘An Account of some Experiments,’ &c., 1782. The descriptions evinced the intelligence and method of a practised chemist, and the book created the greatest sensation. It was summarised at length in the ‘London Chronicle’ (17–19 Oct. 1782), abstracted in Lichtenberg and Forster's ‘Göttingisches Magazin’ (iii. Jahrgang, p. 410), translated by Seyler into German (Dessau, 1783), and reached a second English edition in 1783. Since the time of Robert Boyle [q. v.] alchemy had been entirely discredited in England, and Price himself, in the second edition of his book, declared that while his experiments were incontestable, he regarded the philosopher's stone as a chimera. His reputation as a man of fortune and honour seemed to place him above any suspicion of dishonesty. But in his preface he had declared that his stock of the