Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/42

Unton Broad Hinton, Wiltshire. She married in December 1598 a second husband, George Shirley of Staunton Harold, Leicestershire, who was created a baronet in 1611, died on 27 April 1622, and was ancestor by a former wife of the earls Ferrers (, Letters, pp. 4, 33; cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1595–7, p. 265). She entertained the king and queen at Wadley on 7 and 8 Sept. 1603 (, Progresses of James I, i. 257), and died in 1634.

Much of Unton's voluminous official correspondence during his first embassy to France (1591–2) is extant among the Cottonian manuscripts in the volume Caligula E. viii., some portions of which have been injured by fire. Others of Unton's papers of the same period are in the public record office, and there is an early transcript of a letter-book of his in the Bodleian Library (No. 3498). From these sources a collection of Unton's correspondence was edited by Joseph Stevenson in 1847 for the Roxburghe Club; 255 letters were included, dating between 24 July 1591 and 17 June 1592. Many of Unton's despatches during his second embassy to France (1595–6) are printed in Murdin's ‘Burghley Papers’ (pp. 701–34). Copies of others appear in Birch's manuscripts at the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 4114–7). A further collection of Unton's letters belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps (cf. Gent. Mag. 1844, ii. 151). A few letters are at Hatfield.

A portrait of Unton was painted by Marcus Gheeraerts the younger [q. v.] (cf. Cat. National Portraits at South Kensington, First Exhibition, 1866, p. 41). Another portrait by an unknown artist belongs to the Duke of Norfolk. There is in the National Portrait Gallery a curious picture painted on a long panel by an unknown artist (5 feet 2½ inches by 2 feet 4 inches), which contains a portrait of Unton surrounded by representations of various scenes in his career. He is seated in the centre writing at a table, on which a cameo jewel shows the profile of the queen. In the top right-hand and left-hand corners appear respectively the sun and moon. On each side and above and below Unton's portrait are depicted the chamber of his birth, with a portrait of his mother; other rooms in the family residence at Wadley, in some of which a masque celebrating his marriage is portrayed as in progress; foreign cities which he visited, and the main incidents of his death and burial, including his monument in Faringdon church. Numerous shields display armorial bearings with minute accuracy. The picture, which was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1884, was apparently painted for Unton's widow. At her death in 1634 she bequeathed it to her niece, Lady Unton Dering. It was sold by auction in London in 1743, and afterwards came into the possession of John Thane [q. v.], the printseller. Strutt engraved the scene of the masque at Unton's marriage in his ‘Manners and Customs of the English,’ 1776 (vol. iii. plate xi.), and the head of Sir Henry was engraved for the ‘Antiquarian Repertory’ in December 1779.

[Unton Inventories, edited for the Berkshire Ashmolean Society by John Gough Nichols (1841); Unton Correspondence (Roxburghe Club), 1847; Birch's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i.; Coningsby's Journal of the Siege of Rouen, in Camden Society's Miscellany (vol. i. 1847); Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, ii. 86; Wood's Athenæ Oxon., ed. Bliss, i. 647; Shadwell's Registrum Orielense, i. 41; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Cat. of National Portrait Gallery, 1897.]  UNWIN, MARY (1724–1796), the friend of Cowper, the daughter of William Cawthorne, a draper, of Ely, was born in that city in 1724. Hayley remembered her when comparatively young, a person of lively talents with a sweet serene countenance, and remarkably fond of reading. Cowper afterwards compared her manners to those of a duchess, and she certainly resembled many great ladies of her time by her addiction to snuff. Early in 1744 she married Morley Unwin (1703–1767), son of Thomas Unwin by his wife Martha, the daughter of a cloth manufacturer of Castle Hedingham, Essex. Thomas was a grandson of Thomas Unwin (1618–1689) of Castle Hedingham, and the family had then been established in Essex for several generations, so that the Flemish origin of the Unwins or Onwhynnes must be referred to a much earlier date than that suggested by Dr. Smiles (Huguenots in England). Morley Unwin graduated B.A. from Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1725. He was master of the free school at Huntingdon, and lecturer to the two churches in Huntingdon from 1729 until 1742, when he became rector of Grimston, near King's Lynn in Norfolk. There he resided apparently until 1748, when, upon his wife's request, he left the duty in the charge of a curate, and moved back to Huntingdon, where he occupied a ‘convenient house’ in the High Street, and prepared pupils for the university. He was also reappointed lecturer of St. Mary's, and is said to have caused much dissatisfaction by the irregular performance of the duty. In the autumn of 1765 William Cowper made the acquaintance of the Unwins' eldest son, William Cawthorne Unwin, and he was so pleased with