Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/384

 waste power of machinery in his mills, Priestman, in 1838, commenced manufacturing worsted goods in an upper room. Discovering that the weaver's shuttle generated wealth more easily than the millstone, he removed to larger premises in 1845, and in 1855 he abandoned corn-milling altogether. His treatment of the mill hands, chiefly women and girls, was sympathetic and enlightened, and their tone grew so refined that his works obtained the title of ‘Lady Mills.’ He introduced with success a system of profit-sharing among the superior workpeople.

Much of his time and means was also devoted to the causes of peace and temperance. From 1834, when the Preston ‘teetotallers’ first visited Bradford, he adopted total abstinence. At the same time he and his partner relinquished malt-crushing, the most profitable part of their milling business. He was one of the few supporters of Cobden in his condemnation of the Crimean war (1854), and seconded the unpopular resolution proposed by him at a great meeting at Leeds in that year. Sternly adhering to quaker principles through life, he died at Whetley Hill, Bradford, on 29 Oct. 1866, aged 61, and was buried on 2 Nov. in the Undercliffe cemetery, Bradford. Eleven hundred of his workpeople attended the funeral.

Priestman married, first, on 28 Nov. 1833, Sarah, daughter of Joseph Burgess of Beaumont Lodge, Leicester, who died in 1849, leaving two sons, Edward and Frederick, and a daughter, who married Joseph Edmondson of Halifax. Secondly, he married, in 1852, Mary, daughter of Thomas Smith, miller, of Uxbridge, Middlesex, by whom he left two sons, Arnold, a landscape artist, and Walter.

[Bradford Observer, 1 Nov. 1866; Biogr. Cat. of Portraits at Devonshire House; Friends' Quarterly Examiner, July 1867, p. 344; Ackworth Scholars, 1879, Registers at Devonshire House.]  PRIME, JOHN (1550–1596), divine, son of Robert Prime, a butcher of Oxford, was born in the parish of Holywell (, i. 652). He was admitted a scholar of Winchester in 1564, being then fourteen years old (, Winchester Scholars, p. 139), was elected scholar to New College, Oxford, in 1568–9, and was fellow of that house from 1570 to 1591. He graduated B.A. on 15 Dec. 1572, M.A. on 20 Oct. (or 29th) 1576, B.D. on 22 June 1584, and D.D. on 9 July 1588. On 12 Dec. 1581 he supplicated for license to preach, and eight years later became rector of Adderbury, Oxfordshire. He was held in much repute as a preacher, but died young at Adderbury on 12 April 1596.

Besides some volumes of sermons, Prime published: 1. ‘A short Treatise of Sacraments generally, and in speciall of Baptism and of the Supper,’ 1582, 8vo, London. 2. ‘Treatise of Nature and Grace, in two books, with Answers to the Enemies of Grace upon incident Occasions, offered by the late Jesuits' Notes on the New Testament,’ London, 1583, 8vo (cf., Annals, ii. 157).

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 652, Fasti, i. 188, 201, 227, 244; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Foster's Alumni; Lansd. MS. 982, f. 199; Madan's Early Oxford Press, 1895.]  PRIMROSE, ARCHIBALD,  (1616–1679), Scottish official and judge, born 16 May 1616, was son of James Primrose [q. v.], clerk to the privy council of Scotland, by his second wife, Catharine, daughter of Richard Lawson of Boghall, Lanarkshire. On 2 Sept. 1641 he succeeded his father as clerk to the privy council, and he acted as clerk to the convention of estates in 1643 and 1644. After the victory of Kilsyth he joined the army of Montrose, was taken prisoner at Philiphaugh on 13 Sept. 1645, and was tried and condemned for treason at the parliament of St. Andrews in 1646. His life was spared, but he remained a prisoner till the end of 1646, when he was released, and, again joining the royalist army, he was knighted by Charles II. Having taken part in the engagement of 1648, he was on 10 March 1649 deprived of his office of clerk of the privy council by the Act of Classes, but was reinstated on 6 June 1652. He accompanied Charles II on his march to England, and was made a baronet on 1 Aug. 1651.

After the battle of Worcester his estates were sequestrated, and he remained out of office during the Protectorate. At the Restoration he was appointed lord clerk register out of many competitors, having bought off Sir William Fleming, to whom Charles Il had given a grant of it during his exile.

On 14 Feb. 1661 he was appointed a lord of session under the title of Lord Carrington, a lord of exchequer, and a member of the privy council. He was the principal author of the Rescissory Act, by which all the acts of the Scottish parliament since 1633 were rescinded, and of the series of acts declaratory of the royal prerogative. According to Burnet, he was responsible for, and afterwards regretted, their preambles, ‘full of extravagant rhetoric, reflecting seriously on the proceedings of the late times, and swelled up with the highest phrases and fullest clauses he could invent.’ Although a follower of the party of Middleton and an opponent of Lauderdale, he was politic enough