Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/104

 tion in the ‘Vetusta Monumenta’ on an ancient helmet found at Ribchester. His delight in his collections remained keen. In 1780, when his house, as that of a Roman catholic, was threatened by the Gordon rioters, he hurriedly secured his cabinet of gems, and conveyed to his carriage the famous bust known as Clytie, which, being an unmarried man, he used to call his wife. He had his favourite busts of Clytie, Pericles, and Homer engraved for an occasional visiting card.

In 1786 Townley became a member of the Society of Dilettanti, and in 1791 a trustee of the British Museum. About 1803 his health began to decline, but he amused himself by designing a statue gallery and library for Towneley Hall. He died at 7 Park Street on 3 Jan. 1805, in his sixty-eighth year, and was buried in the family chapel at Burnley in Lancashire. His estates passed to his surviving brother, Edward Towneley Standish, and afterwards to his uncle, John Towneley of Chiswick (d. 1813). The male line failed on the death of Colonel John Towneley in 1878, when the property was divided among seven coheiresses, the daughters of Colonel John's elder brother Charles (1803–1876) and of himself.

The Towneley marbles and terra-cottas were purchased in 1805 from Townley's executors by the British Museum for 20,000l. Edward Towneley Standish was then appointed the first Towneley trustee, and a new gallery built at the museum for the collection was opened to the public in 1808. Townley's bronzes, coins, gems, and drawings were acquired by the museum in 1814 for 8,200l. Townley's manuscript catalogues are preserved in the department of Greek and Roman antiquities, British Museum, and his collections, as deposited in the museum, are described and illustrated in Ellis's ‘Townley Gallery.’ A portion of Townley's collection of drawings from the antique passed into the hands of Sir A. W. Franks. John Thomas Smith (1766–1833) [q. v.] and many young students of the Royal Academy had been employed by Townley to make drawings for his portfolios.

Townley is described as a man of graceful person and polished address, with a kind of ‘Attic irony’ in his conversation. He was liberal in admitting strangers to view his collections (Picture of London for 1802, p. 216), and on Sunday used to give pleasant dinner parties in his spacious dining-room overlooking St. James's Park. In this room his largest statues were ranged against the walls and columns which were wrought in scagliola in imitation of porphyry, with lamps gracefully interspersed. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Nollekens, Zoffany, and the Abbé Devay, whom Townley called his ‘walking library,’ were among his guests. A picture formerly at Towneley Hall, painted by Zoffany about 1782, and engraved by Cardon, shows Townley in his library, surrounded by books and statues, conversing with his friends D'Hancarville, Charles Greville, and Thomas Astle.

There are the following portraits of Townley: 1. A bust by Nollekens, in the British Museum, from a death-mask; this is considered by J. T. Smith a good likeness, though the lower part of the face is too full. 2. A less successful bust by Nollekens, bequeathed to the British Museum by R. Payne Knight. 3. A bust from life by P. Turnerelli, exhibited at Somerset House in 1805. 4. A stipple print engraved by James Godby from a Tassie medallion, 1780 (, Tassie, p. 152). 5. A profile, as on a Greek coin, prefixed to D'Hancarville's ‘Recherches,’ p. 25.

[Nichols's Literary Illustrations, iii. 721–47; Ellis's Townley Gallery; Michaelis's Ancient Marbles in Great Britain; Whitaker's Whalley; Edwards's Lives of the Founders of the British Museum; Smith's Nollekens, pp. 257–66; Guide to the Exhibition Galleries of the Brit. Museum, Introduction; Burke's Hist. of the Commoners, ii. 265 f.]  TOWNELEY, CHRISTOPHER (1604–1674), antiquary, called ‘the Transscriber,’ son of Richard Towneley of Towneley Hall, Lancashire, was born there on 9 Jan. 1603–1604. He was an attorney, but probably did not long follow his profession (he was indeed disabled by being a recusant), the greater part of his long and leisured life being occupied in scientific and antiquarian pursuits. Among his friends and correspondents were Jeremiah Horrox, William Crabtree, William Gascoyne, Sir Jonas Moore, Jeremiah Shakerley, and Flamsteed, astronomers and mathematicians; Roger Dodsworth, Sir William Dugdale, and Hopkinson, antiquaries, and Sir Edward Sherburne, poet. In conjunction with Dr. Richard Kuerden [q. v.] he projected, but never finished, a history of Lancashire. Many years were spent by him in transcribing ‘in a fair but singular hand’ public records, chartularies, and other evidences relating chiefly to Lancashire and Yorkshire. These transcripts were drawn upon by friends during his lifetime, and have since proved a valuable storehouse of materials for county historians and genealogists. The best description of them is given in the fourth report of the historical manuscripts commission (1874, pp. 406, 613). The collections, after