Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/362

 of Gibraltar in 1759, 1769, and 1770. In the last year suggestions made by Colonel Sir William Green [q. v.] were carried out, after the plans had been revised by Skinner.

Each summer he revisited the highlands. In July 1759 Fort George was practically completed, armed and garrisoned, and in 1762 Skinner suggested additions. In 1771 Skinner presented the board of ordnance with a finely executed model of Fort George and a book of thirty-three original plans of the fortress. The model was exhibited at the Tower of London for more than half a century, and was then removed to the model room of the royal engineers at Chatham. Meanwhile he was engaged on the survey and defences of Milford Haven (1758–9 and 1761), and reported on the garrisons and defences of Portsmouth and Plymouth. On 18 Feb. 1761 Skinner was promoted to be major-general, and on 7 March his patent as chief engineer of Great Britain was renewed by George III. On 30 April 1770 he was promoted to be lieutenant-general in the army. Among his later services were projects for the enlargement of the gun-wharf at Devonport, and the erection of new magazines, and the remodelling and augmentation of the lines at Chatham to ensure a better defence to the dockyard. He died in harness at his residence, Croom's Hill, Greenwich, on 25 Dec. 1780. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Alphage, Greenwich, where there is a stone slab to his memory.

Skinner left a widow (Margaret, born Caldwell, to whom the king granted a special pension) and an only son, William, a captain in the 94th regiment, who took part in the capture, in 1761, of Dominica in the West Indies, under Lord Rollo, and was drowned the same year on 27 Aug. at Coulehault on the coast of Dominica. The latter left by his wife Hester, daughter of Dr. Colin Lawder, of Berwick-on-Tweed, with other issue, Thomas Skinner (1759–1818), a colonel of royal engineers, who in 1795 raised a regiment of fencibles in Newfoundland. The latter's five sons all entered the army or navy, and a grandson, Thomas Skinner (1804–1877), is separately noticed; while a daughter, Harriet, wife of Captain George Prescott of the 7th fusiliers, followed her husband's regiment through the Peninsula, and, upon hearing of his death at Salamanca (12 July 1812), dressed herself in male attire and sought his body in the field (the incident formed the subject of a tragedy called ‘The Heroine of Salamanca,’ which was acted in London).

Skinner's drawings in the British Museum include a survey of the island of Belleisle (1761), various plans of Fort George (1750–1754), and views of the north and south Gibraltar (1740). Others of his plans and drawings were presented by Skinner's descendants in 1878 to the Royal Engineers' Institute at Chatham.

A portrait of the ‘chief engineer’ hangs in the convent (the residence of the governor and commander-in-chief) at Gibraltar; a copy is in the mess of the royal engineers at Brompton Barracks, Chatham, Kent, presented by his great-great-grandson, Major Thomas Skinner.

[War Office Records; Royal Engineers' Records; Conolly Papers; Thomas Skinner's Fifty years in Ceylon, 1891; Gent. Mag. 1780, 1789, and 1811; Wright's Life of Wolfe; Cat. of Maps, &c. in the Royal Library, British Museum; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. i. 168; Anderson's Guide to the Highlands; Walpole's George II by Lord Holland, 1846 ed.; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits.]

 SKINNER, WILLIAM (1778–1857), bishop of Aberdeen, second son of John Skinner (1744–1816) [q. v.], bishop of St. Andrews, was born at Aberdeen on 24 Oct. 1778, and educated at Marischal College and at Oxford, where he matriculated from Wadham College on 3 March 1798, graduating B.A. in 1801, and M.A., B.D., and D.D. in 1819. William Stevens, the friend of Bishop Horne, and Jones of Nayland defrayed part of his university expenses (PARK, Life of William Stevens, 1859, pp. 29–34). Skinner was ordained by Bishop Samuel Horsley of St. Asaph's in March 1802. Returning to Scotland, he officiated as assistant, and afterwards as colleague, to his father in the incumbency of St. Andrew's Church, Aberdeen. On 11 Sept. 1816 he was elected by the clergy of the diocese as successor to his father in the see of Aberdeen, and was consecrated at Stirling on 27 Oct. George Gleig, primus of the church, sent a severe but fruitless reproof to the dean and clergy of Aberdeen for electing the son of their late bishop. Skinner was one of the bishops who attended the synod held at Laurencekirk on 18 June 1828 to revise the canons of 1811; thirty canons were adopted and duly signed on 20 June. In 1832 he confirmed as many as four hundred and sixty-two persons, and a first effort was made in the same year to circulate religious works in the Gaelic language. On 29 Aug. 1838 he attended another synod held in St. Paul's Church, Edinburgh, when the canons were again revised. Upon the death of Bishop James Walker [q. v.], Skinner was unanimously elected primus by an episcopal synod held in St. Andrew's Church, Aberdeen, on 2 June 1841. During his rule Glenalmond College, near Perth, was