Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/35

 militia, and received a commission under Sir Isaac Brock; he was present at the capture of Fort Detroit and at Queenston and several other engagements.

In 1814 Robinson served for one session as clerk of the house of assembly for Upper Canada; at the end of the year he qualified for the bar, and was at once called upon to act for a short time as attorney-general. In 1815 he became solicitor-general, and in February 1818 attorney-general, having rapidly acquired one of the best practices at the bar, and exerting remarkable influence with juries. He entered the assembly, but soon migrated to the legislative council on nomination, being speaker of that body from 1828 to 1840. He was the acknowledged leader of the tory party both in and out of parliament, and one of the clique known as the ‘Family Compact’ of Canada; as such he was violently attacked by William Lyon Mackenzie [q. v.] On 15 July 1829 he became chief justice of Upper Canada, remaining in the council till the reunion of the two Canadas in 1840. That union he stoutly opposed, but on its completion he took an active part in adjusting the financial arrangements, and received the thanks of the Upper Canada assembly.

From this time Robinson became more and more absorbed in the heavy work of the courts. He was created C.B. in November 1850, and a baronet in 1854. He was created D.C.L. of Oxford on 20 June 1855. He died at Toronto on 31 Jan. 1863.

Robinson is a prominent figure in the history of Upper Canada; he was the embodiment of the ‘high church and state tory,’ and was always suspicious of the democratic leaders. In his earlier days he was impulsive, and as attorney-general prosecuted the editor of the ‘Freeman’ for a libel on himself. He was a pleasant speaker, with an easy, flowing, and equable style. His work was marked by indefatigable industry and research.

Robinson married, in London in 1817, Emma, daughter of Charles Walker of Harlesden, Middlesex, by whom he had four sons and four daughters. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, James Lukin, who died on 21 Aug. 1894. His second son, John Beverley, born in 1820, was lieutenant-governor of Ontario from 1880 to 1887.

Robinson left several small works, but none of more importance than his pamphlet on ‘Canada and the Canada Bill,’ embodying his arguments against the union of the provinces.

[Morgan's Sketches of Celebrated Canadians; Barker's Canadian Monthly Magazine, May 1846; Lodge's Baronetage, 1863; Burke's Peerage, 1895; Foster's Alumni Oxon. and Peerage, 1882; Withrow's Hist. of Canada; Morgan's Bibliotheca Canadensis; Ryerson's American Loyalists, ii. 198–9.] 

ROBINSON, JOHN HENRY (1796–1871), line engraver, was born at Bolton, Lancashire, in 1796, and passed his boyhood in Staffordshire. At the age of eighteen he became a pupil of James Heath, A.R.A., with whom he remained a little more than two years. He was still a young man when, in 1823, he was commissioned to engrave for the Artists' Fund ‘The Wolf and the Lamb,’ the copyright of which had been given to that institution by the painter, William Mulready, R.A., who was one of its founders. The plate, for which the engraver received eight hundred guineas, proved a success; one thousand impressions were sold, and the fund was benefited to the extent of rather more than 900l. In 1824 Robinson sent to the exhibition of the Society of British Artists six engravings—‘The Abbey Gate, Chester,’ a ‘Gipsy,’ and four portraits, including that of Georgiana, duchess of Bedford, after Sir George Hayter, but he never exhibited again at that gallery. In the next few years he engraved many private portraits and illustrations for books, including ‘A Spanish Lady,’ after Gilbert Stuart Newton, R.A., for the ‘Literary Souvenir’ of 1827; ‘The Minstrel of Chamonix,’ after Henry W. Pickersgill, R.A., for the ‘Amulet’ of 1830; ‘The Flower Girl,’ after P. A. Gaugain, for the ‘Forget me not’ of 1830; and three plates, after Stothard, for Rogers's ‘Italy,’ 1830. He was one of the nine eminent engravers who, in 1836, petitioned the House of Commons for an investigation into the state of the art of engraving in this country, and who, with many other artists, in 1837, addressed a petition to the king praying for the admission of engravers to the highest rank in the Royal Academy—an act of justice which was not conceded until some years later. In 1856, however, Robinson was elected an ‘associate engraver of the new class,’ and in the following year lost his election as a full member only by the casting vote of the president, Sir Charles Eastlake, which was given in favour of George Thomas Doo; on the retirement of the latter in 1867 he was elected a royal academician. Among his more important works were ‘The Emperor Theodosius refused admission into the Church by St. Ambrose’ and a portrait of the Countess of Bedford, both after the pictures by Vandyck in the National Gallery; ‘James Stanley, Earl of Derby, and his Family,’ also after Vandyck; ‘The Spanish Flower Girl,’ after Murillo;