Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/122

 , might possibly have recommended Shipley as primate. But on the very eve of its formation the king gave the archbishopric to Moore (, Memoirs, ii. 315–16).

According to a family tradition, he might have been primate if he would have abandoned his opposition to the war. But his charges of 1778 and 1782 render it hardly possible that his promotion could have been sanctioned by the king. ‘Princes,’ he says, ‘are the trustees, not the proprietors of their people.’ He pleads for shorter parliaments, disfranchisement of small boroughs, ‘safeguards against that encroaching power from which neither we nor our fathers have been sufficiently able to secure ourselves.’ Shipley died on 6 Dec. 1788, at Chilbolton, at the age of seventy-eight, and was buried at Twyford, where his monument, with a medallion by Nollekens, still exists.

The bishop's son William Davies is noticed separately. His eldest daughter Anna Maria, married Sir William Jones [q. v.], the orientalist, while Georgiana married Francis Hare-Naylor [q. v.], and was mother of Julius and of Augustus Hare.

Shipley mixed mainly in political society. Burke was one of his intimate friends, and, through his daughter Georgiana's genius for painting, Sir Joshua Reynolds was another.

According to a contemporary eulogy, Shipley ‘was what a bishop ought to be,’ but the contemporary ideal of episcopal duty was low. Slightly improving on the example of his ‘friend and patron’ Hoadly, who never visited his diocese of Bangor, Shipley resided about a month in the year at St. Asaph, the palace being in a poor condition (Bishop Short's manuscripts at St. Asaph). The rest of the year was divided between London, Chilbolton, and Twyford. His four charges betrayed no religious fervour, but they gave dignified expression to a liberality of political sentiment which lends his career great historical interest.

There is a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the possession of Mrs. Conway Shipley at Twyford, of which there is a replica at Bodrhyddan, near St. Asaph. Two copies of it, made by his daughter Georgiana under the eye of Sir Joshua Reynolds, are in the possession of Mr. Augustus J. C. Hare.

[Works, 2 vols. 1792; Wilberforce's Corresp. vol. i.; Browne Willis's Survey of St. Asaph; Hare's Memorials of a Quiet Life; Sparks's Works of Benjamin Franklin.]

 SHIPLEY, WILLIAM (1714–1803), originator of the ‘Society of Arts,’ the son of Jonathan Shipley (d. 1749) ‘of Walbrook, Middlesex, gent.,’ by his wife Martha (Davies), was born at Maidstone, Kent, in 1714. His brother, Bishop Jonathan Shipley [q. v.], is separately noticed. Having acted for some years as a drawing-master at Northampton, he migrated to London about 1750, and set up a drawing-school near Fountain Court in the Strand (at the east corner of Beaufort Buildings), which was known first as ‘Shipley's Academy’ and afterwards as ‘Ackermann's Repository of Arts.’ The school proved highly successful, and among Shipley's pupils were Richard Cosway, William Pars, and Francis Wheatley. From Shipley's school, moreover, germinated the ‘Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.’ Shipley projected the society in 1753, and his plan was carried into effect by a few noblemen and gentlemen, among them Lords Folkestone and Romney, Drs. Isaac Maddox and Stephen Hales, and Thomas Baker, the naturalist, who convened their first public meeting at Rawthmell's coffee-house, on the north side of Henrietta Street, on 22 March 1754. A ‘plan’ of Shipley's devising was published in 1755 in folio, where the aims of the society are stated, ‘to promote the arts, manufactures, and commerce of this kingdom by giving honorary or pecuniary rewards, as may be best adapted to the case, for the communication to the society, and through the society to the public, of all such useful inventions, discoveries, and improvements as tend to that purpose.’ In the application of science to practical objects it took up ground not occupied by the Royal Society, and soon met with enthusiastic support. Its success prompted the inception of the Royal Academy of Arts, and a preliminary exhibition of pictures was held in the society's rooms in 1760. Next year, however, most of the artists seceded, and the society's picture exhibitions dwindled and died. In 1761 the machinery which gained the premiums of the society was exhibited, and the event formed the germ of the industrial exhibitions of modern times. The society moved from the corner of Beaufort Buildings to its present quarters in John Street, Adelphi, in 1774. A fresh start was made on a new career in 1847, when it obtained a charter and the presidency of the prince consort. The society took an important part in the promotion of the great international exhibitions (1851 and 1862), the photographic society took its rise from an exhibition held under its auspices in 1852, and it has more recently developed an Indian section (1869), a foreign and colonial section (1874), and an applied-art section (1887).

Shipley was elected a ‘perpetual member’ of the society in February 1755, and was