Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/316

  stood higher than in her native country.

 SPALDING, JOHN (fl. 1650), Scottish historian, was possibly a native of Aberdeen. The name was uncommon there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the registers for New Aberdeen record the marriage of ‘Alexander Spalding and Cristine Hervie’ (i.e. Herries) on 7 Feb. 1608. John Spalding became a lawyer, and resided in the ‘Old town,’ Aberdeen. For many years he acted as clerk to the consistorial court for the diocese; and his office, the records of which were burnt in 1721, was within the precincts of the old cathedral of St. Machar. The latest trace of him occurs in a notarial document in his own handwriting, dated 30 Jan. 1663, whereby David, bishop of Aberdeen, acknowledges to have received from Robert Forbes of Glastermuir 25l. 7s. 4d. as feu duty for these lands from Martinmas to Whitsun 1661 and 1662.

Spalding was the author of a valuable annalistic ‘History of the Troubles and Memorable Transactions in Scotland’ between 1624 and 1645. This is a simple narrative of current events, interspersed with copies of documents which no doubt came into Spalding's hands in his official capacity. The work was left incomplete. It begins and ends abruptly, commencing with a feud between the Earl of Moray and the clan Chattan, and ending with Sir John Hurry's junction with General Baillie. Spalding wrote as a shrewd, well-informed, conscientious, yet in the ecclesiastical sense no bigoted, royalist. Charles I he held in the highest veneration. The parliamentarian régime jarred harshly on his conservative instincts, and he deplored many outrages on the fabric of the cathedral of Aberdeen and the prohibition of merrymaking on Christmas day.

Spalding's ‘History’ was first published in Aberdeen' (2 vols. 8vo, 1792); it was re-edited for the Bannatyne Club by William Forbes Skene [q. v.] (4to, 1829), and again by Dr. John Stuart for the Spalding Club (4to, 1850).

In 1839 an antiquarian publishing society, founded at Aberdeen, was named after the historian the Spalding Club. The latest publication is dated 1871. The New Spalding Club, with like objects, was founded at Aberdeen in 1886.

 SPALDING, SAMUEL (1807–1843), writer on moral philosophy, born in London on 30 May 1807, was son of Thomas Spalding and his wife Ann. The father was the founder of the firm of Spalding & Hodge, wholesale stationers, in Drury Lane, and Samuel became a partner in it. Subsequently he studied for the congregational ministry at Coward College, and graduated B.A. in 1839 and M.A. in May 1840, with especial distinction in mental and moral science, at the London University. Invalided by excessive study, he sought to recruit his health, first in Italy, and then by a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, where he died on 14 Jan. 1843 (Gent. Mag. 1843, i. 557). His only work, ‘The Philosophy of Christian Morals,’ published posthumously in London, 1843, 8vo, is an essay more or less ingenious, but by no means original, being, indeed, merely a development of the eclectic theory of Sir James Mackintosh [q. v.]

 SPALDING, WILLIAM (1809–1859), author, son of James Spalding, advocate, of Aberdeen, by his wife Frances Read, was born in Aberdeen on 22 May 1809, and graduated M.A. at Marischal College in 1827. He was afterwards writer to the signet for some years in Edinburgh, where he passed advocate in 1833. In the same year he published a notable ‘Letter on Shakespeare's Authorship of the two Noble Kinsmen, a Drama commonly ascribed to John Fletcher,’ Edinburgh, 8vo, of which a reprint was issued by the New Shakspere Society in 1876. He had made an exhaustive study of the Shakespearean and Elizabethan drama, and to the ‘Edinburgh Review’ he contributed articles on ‘Shakespearean Literature,’ July 1840; Hallam's ‘Literature of Europe,’ October 1840; on Beaumont and Fletcher, April 1841 and July 1847; editions of Shakespeare, April 1845; and ‘Shakespeare's Critics,’ July 1849. Through the interest of Jeffrey he was elected on 2 Nov. 1840 to the chair of rhetoric and belles-lettres in the university of Edinburgh, which he exchanged in 1845 for that of logic, rhetoric, and metaphysics at St. Andrews. The latter he held until