Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/136

 Peters, and others. Of these the finest is the entry of Cardinal Wolsey into Leicester Abbey, after Westall. Thew also engraved a few excellent portraits, including Master Hare, after Reynolds, 1790; Sir Thomas Gresham, after Sir Anthony More, 1792; and Miss Turner, with the title ‘Reflections on Werter,’ after Richard Crosse. He held the appointment of historical engraver to the Prince of Wales, and died at or near Stevenage, Hertfordshire, shortly before August 1802.



THEYER, JOHN (1597–1673), antiquary, son of John Theyer (d. 1631), and grandson of Thomas Theyer of Brockworth, Gloucestershire, was born there in 1597. Richard Hart, the last prior of Lanthony Abbey, Gloucestershire, lord of the manor of Brockworth, and the builder of Brockworth Court, was brother of his grandmother, Ann Hart (Trans. Bristol and Gloucester Archæological Soc. vii. 161, 164). Theyer inherited Richard Hart's valuable library of manuscripts, which determined his bent in life.

He entered Magdalen College, Oxford, when about sixteen, but did not graduate. On 6 July 1643 he was created M.A. by the king's command, ‘ob merita sua in rempub. literariam et ecclesiam.’ After three years at Magdalen he practised common law at New Inn, London, whither Anthony Wood's mother proposed to send her son to qualify under Theyer for an attorney (, Life and Times, Oxford Hist. Soc., i. 130). Although Wood did not go, he became a lifelong friend, and visited Theyer to make use of his library at Cooper's Hill, Brockworth, a small estate given him by his father on his marriage in 1628. He lived here chiefly (cf. State Papers, Dom. 1639–40 pp. 280, 285, and 1640 pp. 383, 386, 388, 392), but in 1643 was in Oxford, serving in the king's army, and presented to Charles I, in Merton College garden, a copy of his ‘Aerio Mastix, or a Vindication of the Apostolicall and generally received Government of the Church of Christ by Bishops,’ Oxford, 1643, 4to. Wood says he became a catholic about this time, and began, but did not live to finish, ‘A Friendly Debate between Protestants and Papists.’ His estate was sequestrated by the parliament, who pronounced him one of the most ‘inveterate’ with whom they had to deal. His family were almost destitute until his discharge was obtained on 4 Nov. 1652.

Theyer died at Cooper's Hill on 25 Aug. 1673, and was buried in Brockworth churchyard on the 28th.

By his wife Susan, Theyer had a son John; the latter's son Charles (b. 1651) matriculated at University College, Oxford, on 7 May 1668, and was probably the lecturer of Totteridge, Hertfordshire, who published ‘A Sermon on her Majesty's Happy Anniversary,’ London, 1707, 4to. To this grandson Theyer bequeathed his collection of eight hundred manuscripts (catalogued in Harl. MS. 460). Charles offered them to Oxford University, and the Bodleian Library despatched [q. v.] to see them, but no purchase was effected, and they passed into the hands of Robert Scott, a bookseller of London. A catalogue of 336 volumes, dated 29 July 1678, prepared by [q. v.], rector of St. Peter's, Cornhill, and afterwards bishop of St. Asaph, and [q. v.], is in Royal MS. Appendix, 70. The Collection, which in Bernard's ‘Catalogus Manuscriptorum Angliæ,’ 1697, had dwindled to 312, was bought by Charles II and passed with the Royal Library to the British Museum, where they are now numbered MS. Reg. C. 13 et seq.



THICKNESSE, formerly, ANN (1737–1824), authoress and musician, wife of [q. v.], was the only child of Thomas Ford (d. 1768), clerk of the arraigns. Her mother was a Miss Champion. Ann Ford was born in a house near the Temple, London, on 22 Feb. 1737. As the niece of Dr. Ford, the queen's physician, and of Gilbert Ford, attorney-general of Jamaica, she was received in fashionable society and became a favourite on account of her beauty and talent. Before she was twenty she had been painted by Hone in the character of a muse, and celebrated for her dancing by the Earl of Chesterfield. The ‘town’ frequented her Sunday concerts, where Dr. Arne, Tenducci, and other professors were heard, besides all the fashionable amateurs, the hostess playing the viol da gamba and singing to the guitar. ‘She is excellent in music, loves solitude, and has unmeasurable affectations,’ wrote one lord to another at Bath in 1758 (cf. A Letter from