Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/315

 and the Revolution.’ The two parts were in 1848 republished together. The general excellence of Mrs. Rathbone's workmanship, when she is at her best, becomes most clearly evident if ‘Lady Willoughby's Diary’ is compared with Anne Manning's ‘Life of Mary Powell’ (1850), which manifestly owed its origin to the success of the earlier work, but is altogether inferior to it.

In 1852 Mrs. Rathbone published the ‘Letters of Richard Reynolds,’ her paternal grandfather, with an unpretending ‘Memoir.’ In 1858 she printed a short series of poems called ‘The Strawberry Girl, with other Thoughts and Fancies in Verse.’ She died at Liverpool on 26 March 1878.



RATHBONE, JOHN (1750?–1807), artist, born in Cheshire about 1750, practised in Manchester, London, and Preston as a landscape-painter in both oil and watercolour. Although he gained the name of the ‘Manchester Wilson’ [see, (1714–1782)], his works in oil are opaque, flat, and ineffective. His works in watercolour, though in the light and washed style then practised, are well drawn and interesting. The British Museum possesses three of his watercolour drawings, all of which are landscapes with figures, and there is a cleverly drawn landscape by him in grey faded tints at South Kensington. There is a landscape in oils in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, by Rathbone, and two hang in the Peel Park Art Gallery, Salford. Between 1785 and 1806 Rathbone exhibited forty-eight landscapes at the Royal Academy and two at the Society of Artists. He also exhibited three landscapes at the exhibition of the Society of Artists in Liverpool in August 1774. The catalogue states against his name ‘now at Preston.’ [q. v.] and [q. v.] were intimate friends, and many of the figures in his pictures are assigned to them. Rathbone died in 1807.



RATHBONE, WILLIAM (1757–1809), merchant, eldest son of William Rathbone (1726–1789), by his first wife, Rachel (Rutter), was born at Liverpool in 1757. The family came originally from Gawsworth, Cheshire, and founded the firm of William Rathbone & Son at Liverpool in 1746. His father, a member and preacher of the Society of Friends, had taken an active part in the movement for the abolition of slavery initiated by [q. v.] Rathbone, who was well educated and a good classic, became an important public man in Liverpool, advocating with zeal and eloquence a liberal policy in local and national affairs. He was prominent in 1792 in efforts to avert the war with France, and in that year and in 1809 led a movement against the monopoly of the East India Company. He was conspicuous as a promoter of municipal reform. To his exertions was largely due the formation of a body of opinion in Liverpool opposed to the slave trade (abolished 1807); his father seems to have been among his converts. Later he gave evidence before parliament in favour of free trade with the United States. It is worth noting that the first consignment of cotton grown in the States and imported thence (eight bales and three barrels) was made in 1784 to the firm of Rathbone. Previously nearly all cotton had come from the eastern West Indies, and the consignment was seized at the custom house as an evasion of the navigation laws, on the ground that cotton was not grown in America.

Educated as a Friend, Rathbone had always been opposed in some points to the strictness of the society's discipline, objecting especially to the exclusion of members for mixed marriages, and for the voluntary payment of tithe. He held also that a wide latitude in doctrine was compatible with Friends' principles; hence from 1792 he had become a subscriber to the Unitarian Book Society of London. This produced a remonstrance (31 Aug. 1793) from Job Scott, an Irish Friend. About 1795 a doctrinal controversy, turning on the infallibility of scripture, arose among Friends in Ireland, in which [q. v.] took the side of heterodoxy. The difference was fomented by the preaching of Hannah Barnard (d. 1828) from New York, and the heterodox party was known (1802) as the ‘Barnard schism.’ Rathbone published, on 30 March 1804, a ‘Narrative’ of the proceedings, admitted to be ‘correct in regard to documentary facts’. For this publication he was disowned by Hardshaw (St. Helens) monthly meeting at Manchester, on 28 Feb. 1805, on the ground that he had expressed opinions contrary to Friends' doctrine of the immediate teaching of Christ, and the reverence due to the scriptures. He did not appeal, nor did he join any other religious body, though occasionally worshipping with the unitarian congregation at Benn's Garden, Liverpool, under Robert Lewin, of which his intimate friend, [q. v.], the historian, was a member. He died at his residence, Greenbank, near Liverpool, on 11 Feb. 1809, aged 52, and was buried in the