Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/309

Viccars  Furnivall's Life prefixed to Vicary's Anatomy (Early English Text Soc.), 1888, where many original documents are printed.]  VICCARS, JOHN (1604–1660), biblical scholar, elder son of Gregory Viccars of Treswell in Nottinghamshire, was baptised at Treswell on 30 Oct. 1604. His sister Helen was the wife of the dramatist William Sampson (1590?–1636?) [q. v.] (Notes and Queries, 5th ser. ii. 226). John was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, whence he graduated B.A. in 1621–2. He was incorporated B.A. at Oxford on 24 Feb. 1624–5, graduated M.A. from Lincoln College on 28 March 1625, and was incorporated M.A. at Cambridge in the same year. In 1640 he was presented to the rectory of South Fambridge in Essex, and on 5 May 1646 was instituted to that of Battlesden in Bedfordshire, both of which he held until 1646, when he was sequestered by the Westminster assembly of divines. On his suspension he went abroad, and during the puritan ascendency travelled from place to place, ‘visiting divers academies and recesses of learning, and gaining from them and their respective libraries great experience and knowledge.’ Viccars was a man of unusual learning and an admirable linguist. In 1639 he published ‘Decapla in Psalmos: sive Commentarius ex decem Linguis,’ London, fol., a work of immense learning, drawn from Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Rabbinical, Chaldæan, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French sources. An examination shows, however, that Viccars's skill in tongues was superior to his critical power. A new edition was issued in 1655 with a frontispiece by Wenceslaus Hollar. Viccars died in 1660. He is sometimes confused with the more famous presbyterian, John Vicars [q. v.]

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 657; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Newcourt's Repert. Eccles. ii. 254; Bedfordshire Notes and Queries, ii. 197; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.]  VICKERS, ALFRED GOMERSAL (1810–1837), marine-painter, was born at Lambeth on 21 April 1810. He received instruction in art from his father, Alfred Vickers (1786–1868), a landscape-painter, born at St. Mary, Newington, on 10 Sept. 1786, who exhibited numerous pictures of English scenery at the Royal Academy, from 1813 to 1859, at the British Institution, and at the Suffolk Street gallery.

The son exhibited paintings both in oil and watercolours at the same galleries and at the New Watercolour Society. He painted chiefly marine subjects, but also architecture and figures. In 1833 he received a commission to make sketches in Russia for publication. Steel engravings from these and from many of his marine pieces appeared in the annuals (1835–7). His talent, which surpassed that of his father, was beginning to obtain public recognition when he died on 12 Jan. 1837. His pictures were sold at Christie's on 16 Feb. in the same year.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Gent. Mag. 1837, i. 443.]  VICKRIS, RICHARD (d. 1700), quaker writer, the son of Robert Vickris, sheriff of Bristol in 1656, was born probably in that city about the middle of the seventeenth century. His grandfather, Richard Vickris, a native of Bewdley in Worcestershire, settled in Bristol, where he was sheriff in 1636, mayor in 1646, and master of the merchant venturers in 1648. Richard the elder was a convinced puritan and roundhead, subscribed to the maintenance of Sir William Waller's army, signed the order for the demolition of Bristol Castle (1655), and persecuted the quakers according to his lights. At the Restoration, however, he waited on Charles with the other Bristol deputies, bearing an address and a purse (500l.) of gold. He died in 1668, and his son Robert followed closely in his father's footsteps, being master of the venturers in 1669, and a city politician and persecutor of quakers.

Richard Vickris as a youth fell under the influence of the quakers, who were at the time rapidly multiplying in Bristol, and his father, to rid him of the contagion, sent him to France. There, however, his tendencies were only developed by the metaphysics which he learned from or in the school of Malebranche, the hierophant of the modified Cartesianism of Louis XIV. Malebranche's ‘Recherche de la Verité’ determined him to join the Society of Friends, and, having returned to England, he married a young quakeress named Bishop, and regularly attended meeting. In 1680 he was excommunicated, tried under the recusancy act of 35 Elizabeth, and, refusing either to retract or to conform, was sentenced to death. He was, however, reprieved through the energy of his wife and, it is probable, a word from Penn, a friend of the family, to the Duke of York, and he received a free pardon at the hands of Jeffreys in 1684. His father now received him with affection, and bequeathed him (his death took place a few days after his son's release) his estate and house at Chew Magna, Somerset. There Richard Vickris wrote several works in defence of the Friends, remarkable among the polemics