Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/363

 under Pitt, 2nd edit.; Wolfe Tone's Autobiography, ed. O'Brien; Corbet's Conduct of the Senate at Hamburg revealed, Paris, 1807; Howell's State Trials, xxvii. 1194–1243; Tandy's (Jas.) Appeal to the Public … in which several characters are involved, Dublin, 1807; Watty Cox's Irish Magazine, 1809, p. 52; Abbot's Diary, i. 445; Froude's English in Ireland; Lecky's Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Century; Wills's Irish Nation, iii. 340–2.] 

TANFIELD, LAWRENCE (d. 1625), judge, born at Burford in Oxfordshire, was the son of Robert Tanfield of Burford by his wife, Wilgeford Fitzherbert. Robert was the second son of William Tanfield of Gayton in Northamptonshire (, Northamptonshire, 1841, ii. 275–6).

Lawrence was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1569, and is mentioned as an advocate before 1579. On 26 Oct. 1584 he was returned to parliament for New Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and he continued to sit for that borough during the remainder of Elizabeth's reign. In Lent 1595 he became reader at the Inner Temple, and in Easter 1603 he was created a serjeant-at-law. On his journey from Scotland James visited him at Burford on 9 Sept. 1603, and stayed three nights at his house. On 7 March 1603–4 he was returned for the county of Oxford in the first parliament of James I; he was knighted at the Tower on the 14th of the same month, and on 13 Jan. 1606 he was appointed a puisne justice of the king's bench. On 25 June 1607 he was advanced to the office of the chief baron of the exchequer, which he retained until his death on 30 April 1625. A monument was erected to his memory in Burford church, where he was buried. He gave his name to Tanfield Court in the Temple, formerly called Bradshaw's Rents. Sir Lawrence was a shareholder in the Newfoundland Company, founded in 1614.

Although Sir Lawrence bore a good reputation among his contemporaries, yet he appears to have been a hard unjust man. Insinuations of corruption are not wanting against him; his near kinsman, Sir Antony Maine, accused him of fraud; and the inhabitants of Great Tew in Oxfordshire, where he had an estate, complained bitterly of his oppression. He was surpassed, however, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Giles Symondes of Claye, Norfolk. It was openly alleged that she took bribes to influence her husband's decisions; and the unfortunate inhabitants of Great Tew complained that ‘she saith that we are more worthy to be ground to powder than to have any favour shewed to us, and that she will play the very devil among us’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. pp. 31–3).

Sir Lawrence had one daughter, Elizabeth, his sole heiress, who married Sir, viscount Falkland [q. v.], and was mother of, second viscount [q. v.] In 1597 Michael Drayton dedicated to her two of his ‘Heroical Epistles,’ those between the Duke of Suffolk and Queen Margaret.



TANKERVILLE,. [See, d. 1421;, d. 1701.]

TANNAHILL, ROBERT (1774–1810), Scottish song-writer, son of James Tannahill, silk-weaver, and his wife Janet Pollock, an Ayrshire farmer's daughter, was born at Paisley on 3 June 1774. Educated in Paisley, he impressed his schoolfellows more by his rhyming gift than his studious habits. At the age of thirteen he was bound apprentice weaver to his father, and managed to read much and widely both at the loom and during his leisure hours. Concluding his apprenticeship, he worked for some time at Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, and in the end of 1799 settled at Bolton, Lancashire. On his father's death, about the beginning of 1802, he returned to Paisley and continued the business with his mother, settling down in the spirit manifested in his touching poem ‘Filial Duty.’

In 1803 Tannahill became a leading member of a new club, where his associates did him good service by criticising his poetical exercises. For this club he wrote several spirited lyrics, and he composed for the local Burns club between 1805 and 1810 three notable odes celebrating the anniversary of Burns's birth. [q. v.] and John Ross of Aberdeen having set several of his songs to music, they speedily became popular. ‘Perhaps,’ Tannahill once said, ‘the highest pleasure ever I derived from these things has been hearing, as I walked down the pavement at night, a girl within doors rattling away at some one of them’ (, Works of Tannahill, p. xxi). Never robust, but with a consumptive tendency, Tannahill took little part in public affairs, but he gave strenuous help towards establishing in Paisley the trades library for working men, which was opened in 1805. In March 1810 he received a visit from (1770–1835) [q. v.], the Ettrick 