Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/233

 1810, v. 429). Selkirk was introduced to Steele, who knew Woodes Rogers (, Life of Steele, ii. 195–6), and his story was made the subject of a graphic paper (No. 26) in the ‘Englishman’ (3 Dec. 1713). Steele describes him as a man of good sense, with a strong and serious but cheerful expression.

In 1719 Defoe published ‘Robinson Crusoe’ [see ]. Perhaps Defoe's attention was recalled to Selkirk's story by the appearance of a second edition of Rogers's ‘Voyage’ in 1718. Despite some apocryphal stories, there is nothing to show that Defoe knew anything of Selkirk beyond what had been published by Rogers, Cooke, and Steele. Defoe owed little of his detail to this ‘downright sailor,’ as Cooke put it, ‘whose only study was to support himself during his confinement’ (, Life of Defoe, 1894, pp. 171–2, 402; Romances and Narratives, ed. Aitken, 1895, vol. i. p. lii).

Selkirk returned to Largo early in the spring of 1712, and there lived the life of a recluse, making for the purposes of meditation a sort of cave in his father's garden. After a short time, however, he met a girl named Sophia Bruce, and persuaded her to elope with him, apparently to Bristol, and thence to London. The records of the court of queen's bench contain a process against ‘Alexander Selkirke,’ of the parish of St. Stephen, Bristol, for an assault on Richard Nettle, shipwright, on 23 Sept. 1713 (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. xi. 246). In a will of January 1717–18 Selkirk called Sophia his ‘loving friend, Sophia Bruce, of the Pall Mall, London, spinster,’ and made her his executrix and heiress, leaving her, with remainder to his nephew Alexander, son of David Selkirk, a tanner of Largo, a house at Craigie Well, which his father had bequeathed to him (cf. Scots Mag. 1805, pt. ii. pp. 670–4). Selkirk apparently deserted Sophia afterwards. After his death, a Sophia Selcraig, who claimed without legal justification to be his widow (no date is given), applied for charity to the Rev. Samuel Say, a dissenting minister in Westminster (‘Say Papers,’ in the Monthly Repository, 1810, v. 531).

Meanwhile Selkirk had resumed his life as a sailor, and before 1720 seems to have married a widow named Frances Candis. On 12 Dec. 1720 he made a new will, describing himself as ‘of Oarston [Plymstock, Devon], mate of his majesty's ship Weymouth.’ He left everything he had to his wife Frances, whom he made his sole executrix. He entered the Weymouth as master's mate on 20 Oct. 1720, and apparently died on board next year. In the ship's pay-book he is entered as ‘dead 12 Dec. 1721.’ The will of 1720 was propounded for probate on 28 July 1722, and was proved by the widow on 5 Dec. 1723, when both her marriage to Selkirk and his death were admitted. She claimed the house at Craigie Well, and apparently obtained possession of it. Before December 1723, when she proved the will, she had married a third time, being then the ‘wife of Francis Hall’ (‘Will of Alexander Selkirk, 1720,’ in New England Hist. and Gen. Reg. October 1896, and with facsimile, ib. April 1897). Selkirk seems to have had no children.

Various relics were preserved by Selkirk's friends, and a bronze statue has been erected at Largo. A tablet in his memory was also placed, in 1868, near his look-out at Juan Fernandez, by Commodore Powell and the officers of H.M.S. Topaz, for which they were thanked by Thomas Selcraig, Selkirk's only collateral descendant, then living in Edinburgh (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ii. 503, iii. 69). But the best memorials are ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and Cowper's ‘Lines on Solitude,’ beginning ‘I am monarch of all I survey.’

[The fullest account of Selkirk, based chiefly on the contemporary narratives already mentioned, is contained in the Life and Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, by John Howell, 1829. An earlier work, Providence Displayed, or The Remarkable Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, by Isaac James, appeared in 1800, and the story was retold in the Rev. H. C. Adams's Original Robinson Crusoe, 1877. The author of ‘Picciola’ (Saintine, i.e. J. Xavier Boniface) professed to base his interesting romance ‘Seul’ (Paris, 1850) upon the true history of Selkirk, and his work was translated as ‘The Solitary of Juan Fernandez,’ Boston, 1851. See also Wilson's Life of Defoe, 1830, iii. 445–57; Sutcliffe's Crusoniana, 1843, pp. 144–52; Collet's Relics of Literature, 1823, pp. 342–4; Funnell's Voyage round the World, 1707; Gent. Mag. xliii. 374, 423, lvii. 1155, lviii. 206; information kindly given by Mr. John Ward Dean of Boston, U.S.A., and Mr. Hubert Hall, F.S.A., of the Public Record Office.]

 SELLAR, PATRICK (1780–1851), of Westfield, Morayshire, factor to George Granville Leveson-Gower, first duke of Sutherland [q. v.], was only son of Thomas Sellar of Westfield by Jane, daughter of the Rev. Patrick Plenderleath, an Edinburgh minister. After a legal education in Edinburgh, he became factor to the Duke of Sutherland, and was employed in the changes on the Sutherland estates that took place between 1807 and 1816. The middlemen were