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  and enjoying Newton's friendship and hospitality. During the greater part of the time he was connected with an academy in Little Tower Street (cf. a prospectus entitled ‘A Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy,’ by Mr. James Stirling, F.R.S., &c., London, 1727). In 1730 he published his most important work, ‘Methodus Differentialis, sive Tractatus de Summatione et Interpolatione Serierum Infinitarum’ (London, 4to; new ed. 1764; translated into English in 1749, by Francis Holliday). In 1735 he was appointed manager to the Scots Mining Company at Leadhills in Lanarkshire, and proved extremely successful as a practical administrator, the condition of the mining company improving vastly owing to his method of employing labour to work the mines. In 1746 he was suggested as a candidate for the mathematical chair at Edinburgh University, vacant by the death of [q. v.], but his Jacobite principles rendered his appointment impossible. At a later time he surveyed the Clyde with a view to rendering it navigable by a series of locks, thus taking the first step towards making Glasgow the commercial capital of Scotland. The citizens were not ungrateful, and in 1752 presented him with a silver tea-kettle ‘for his service, pains, and trouble.’ He died at Edinburgh on 5 Dec. 1770. By his wife, the daughter of Watson of Thirtyacres, near Stirling, he left one daughter, Christian, who married her cousin, Archibald Stirling of Garden.

Besides the works mentioned Stirling communicated to the Royal Society a paper ‘On the Figure of the Earth, and on the Variation of the Force of Gravity at its Surface’ in 1735, and in 1745 ‘A Description of a Machine to blow Fire by the Fall of Water’ (Phil. Trans. xxxix. 98, xliii. 315). He also left two volumes in manuscript of a treatise on weights and measures and a number of papers and letters, which are preserved at Garden.



STIRLING, JAMES (1740?–1805), first baronet, lord provost of Edinburgh, born in 1740 or early in 1741, was the son of Alexander Stirling, cloth merchant in Edinburgh, by his wife Jane, daughter of James Muir of Lochfield, Perthshire. In early life he went to the West Indies as clerk to Archibald Stirling of Keir, an extensive planter there, who was great-uncle of Sir [q. v.]; and not long afterwards he was appointed, through Stirling's influence, secretary to Sir Charles Dalling, governor of Jamaica. Having acquired in the West Indies a considerable fortune, he returned to Edinburgh, and became partner in the banking house of Mansfield, Ramsay, & Co., marrying Alison, the daughter of James Mansfield, the senior partner. Having entered the town council of Edinburgh in 1771, he filled the office of treasurer in 1773–4, and was thrice chosen lord provost—in 1790, 1794, and 1798. For his firm yet prudent conduct in connection with the reform riots in 1792 he was on 17 July of the same year created a baronet. He died on 17 Feb. 1805, leaving three sons and two daughters, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, Gilbert, on whose death in 1843 it became extinct.



STIRLING, JAMES (1791–1865), admiral and first governor of Western Australia, born in 1791, was fifth son of Andrew Stirling of Drumpellier, Lanarkshire, by Anne, daughter of Sir  [q. v.] He entered the navy in August 1803 on board the Camel storeship, in which he went out to the West Indies, where he was moved into the Hercule, of 74 guns, flagship of Sir John Thomas Duckworth. In 1805 he was in the Glory, then flagship of his uncle, Rear-admiral Charles Stirling [see under ], and was in the action off Cape Finisterre on 22 July 1805. He continued with his uncle in the Sampson, and again in the Diadem, in which he served during the operations in the Rio de la Plata in 1807. He was promoted to be lieutenant on 12 Aug. 1809, and in 1811 went out to the West Indies as flag-lieutenant to his uncle; by him he was promoted on 19 June 1812 to the command of the Brazen sloop, in which for some months he cruised successfully off the mouths of the Mississippi. Still in the Brazen, he was afterwards in Hudson's Bay, in the North Sea, on the coast of Ireland, and again in the Gulf of Mexico, and after the peace commanded her in the West Indies till 1818. On the special recommendation of the commander-in-chief, he was promoted to post rank on 7 Dec. 1818.

On 25 Jan. 1826 he was appointed to the Success, and sent to form a settlement in Raffles Bay, Torres Strait. For the successful performance of that duty he was highly complimented by the commander-in-