Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/186

 the third was by Philip Holland [q. v.]; the remaining contributor was Richard Godwin (1722–1787), minister at Gateacre, near Liverpool. The book was used in the Octagon Chapel, Liverpool, from its opening on 5 June 1763 till 25 Feb. 1776, after which the building was sold, and converted into St. Catherine's Church [see, D.D.]. Seddon declined to become the minister of the Octagon Chapel, and in his own ministry practised extemporary prayer.

Seddon was a main founder (1758) of the Warrington public library, and its first president. He was the first secretary (1764) of the Lancashire and Cheshire Widows' Fund. He died suddenly at Warrington on 23 Jan. 1770, and was buried in Cairo Street Chapel. He married, in 1757, a daughter of one Hoskins, equerry to Frederick, prince of Wales, but had no issue. His wife's fortune was invested in calico-printing works at Stockport, and lost. She survived him. A valuable selection from his letters and papers was edited by Robert Brook Aspland [q. v.], in the ‘Christian Reformer’ (1854 pp. 224 sq., 358 sq., 613 sq., 1855 pp. 365 sq.). A silhouette likeness of Seddon is in Kendrick's ‘Profiles of Warrington Worthies,’ 1854.

[Funeral Sermon, by Philip Holland, in Holland's Sermons, 1792, vol. ii.; Brief Memoir, by Aspland, in Christian Reformer, 1854, pp. 224 sq.; Seddon Papers, in Christian Reformer, ut supra; Monthly Repository, 1810, p. 428; Turner's Historical Account of Warrington Academy, in Monthly Repository, 1813; Taylor's Account of the Lancashire Controversy on Prayer, in Monthly Repository, 1822, pp. 20 sq.; Bright's Historical Sketch of Warrington Academy, in Transactions of Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. xi. (11 Nov. 1858), also separately printed, 1859, and abridged in Christian Reformer, 1861, pp. 682 sq.; Nightingale's Lancashire Nonconformity (1892), iv. 217 sq. (1893), vi. 128 sq.; manuscript volume of letters relating to Octagon Chapel, in library of Renshaw Street Chapel, Liverpool; extract from Glasgow matriculation register, per W. Innes Addison, Esq.]

 SEDDON, THOMAS (1753–1796), author, son of John Seddon, farmer, of Pendleton, near Manchester, was born in 1753, and received part of his education at the Manchester grammar school. He was intended by his father for the medical profession, but himself chose the church, though he was ill-suited for it. He matriculated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 2 March 1776, but wasted his time, ran into debt, and took no degree, although he afterwards styled himself M.A. In January 1777 he was curate of the chapelry of Stretford, near Manchester, which he held until his death. For a time he was also curate at St. George's, Wigan, and from 1789 incumbent of Lydgate, Saddleworth, in the parish of Rochdale. His living at Stretford was sequestered for debt after he had been there two or three years. At Wigan he was unpopular, and generally he appears to have been negligent of his duties, and ‘a clever but erratic parson of the Doctor Dodd species,’ as James Crossley styled him (Manchester School Reg. i. 116). He married for means a young lady of good family near Manchester, and died in 1796, on his passage to the West Indies, as chaplain of the 104th or royal regiment of Manchester volunteers.

He was author of, apart from sermons: 1. ‘Characteristic Strictures, or Remarks on upwards of One Hundred Portraits of the most Eminent Persons in the Counties of Lancaster and Chester,’ London, 1779, 4to [anon.]; a series of libellous and satiric sketches which gave great offence. 2. ‘Letters written to an Officer in the Army on various subjects, Religious, Moral, and Political, with a view to the Manners, Accomplishments, and proper Conduct of Young Gentlemen,’ Warrington, 1786, 2 vols. 8vo. 3. ‘Impartial and Free Thoughts on a Free Trade to the Kingdom of Ireland’ [1780], 8vo.

[Manchester School Register, i. 115 (Chetham Soc.); Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1714–1886; Bailey's Old Stretford, 1878, p. 45; Clarke's School Candidates, ed. J. E. Bailey, 1877, p. 17.]

 SEDDON, THOMAS (1821–1856), landscape-painter, son of Thomas Seddon, a well-known cabinet-maker, was born in Aldersgate Street, London, on 28 Aug. 1821. He was educated at a school conducted on the Pestalozzian system by the Rev. Joseph Barron at Stanmore, and afterwards entered his father's business, but he found its duties so irksome that in 1841 he was sent to Paris to study ornamental art. He attained great efficiency as a draughtsman, and on his return he made designs for furniture and superintended their execution. In 1848 he gained the prize of a silver medal and twenty pounds offered by the Society of Arts for a design for an ornamental sideboard. He also practised drawing from the life, and in 1849 visited North Wales and stayed some weeks at Bettws-y-Coed; there he began his first real studies of landscape, which he continued in the following year at Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau. In 1850 he took an active part in establishing the North London school of drawing and modelling in Camden