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 thus became one of the magnates of Lancashire. Bred in, he adhered to, the principles and practices of the Roman catholic church. He subscribed at Oxford, 1 July 1613, but did not graduate. He was entered student at Gray's Inn on 11 Nov. 1614, was knighted on 11 Aug. 1617, represented the Lancashire borough of Clitheroe in the parliament of 1621–2, and Lancashire itself in that of 1623–4. He died at Dunkenhalgh on 12 March 1641–2, having married twice and leaving issue by both wives. His posterity died out in the male line in 1711, but through the marriage of the last male descendant's youngest sister, Catherine Walmesley, with Robert, seventh baron Petre, her first husband, is in the female line represented in the peerage at the present day; by her second husband, Charles, fifteenth baron Stourton, she had no issue. (For other branches see, Landed Gentry.)

[Shuttleworth Accounts (Chetham Soc.), pp. 91, 265, 1077; St. George's Visitation of Lancaster (Chetham Soc.), p. 67; Hist. of the Chantries within the County Palatine of Lancashire (Chetham Soc.) i. 155; Lancashire and Cheshire Wills and Inventories (Chetham Soc.), iii. 193; Lancashire and Cheshire Wills and Inventories (Chetham Soc. n.s.) vol. ii.; Lancashire Lieutenancy under the Tudors (Chetham Soc.); Dr. Farmer Chetham MS. (Chetham Soc.), Lanc. and Chesh. Rec. Soc., i. 234; Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire (Surtees Soc), p. 14; Genealogist, new ser. ed. Murray, x. 243; Chetham Misc. i. art. iii. 26, iii. art. iii. 8, vi. p. xxviii; Whitaker's Hist. of Whalley; Abram's Hist. of Blackburn; Lincoln's Inn Records; Inner Temple Records, i. 473; Addit. MS. 12507, f. 78; Metcalfe's Book of Knights; Wynne's Serjeant-at-law; Dugdale's Orig. pp. 48, 253, 261, 313, 378; Chron. Ser. pp. 97–100; Manning's Serviens ad Legem, p. 240; Dr. Dee's Diary (Camden Soc.); Manningham's Diary (Camden Soc.), p. 59; D'Ewes's Journal of the Parliaments (1682); Spedding's Life of Bacon, ii. 173, 283; Hutton Corresp. (Surtees Soc.), p. 157; Cobbett's State Trials, i. 1334, ii. 62; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–1615; Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. App. i. 272–3, 11th Rep. App. iii. 21, 12th Rep. App. iv. 183, 229, 362, 14th Rep. App. iv. 583; Cal. Cecil MSS. v. 469, vi. 76, 210, 224; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Gray's Inn Adm. Reg.; Baines's Lancashire, ed. Harland; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, ‘Stourton;’ Foss's Lives of the Judges.] 

WALMISLEY or WALMSLEY, GILBERT (1680–1751), friend of Dr. Johnson, was descended from an ancient family in Lancashire [see ]. He was born in 1680, and was the son of William Walmisley of the city of Lichfield, chancellor of that diocese from 1698 to 1713, and M.P. for the city in 1701, who married in Lichfield Cathedral on 22 April 1675 Dorothy Gilbert, and was buried in the cathedral on 18 July 1713. He matriculated as commoner from Trinity College, Oxford, on 14 April 1698, but did not take a degree. In 1707 he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, and became registrar of the ecclesiastical court of Lichfield. He was probably a near relative of William Walmisley, prebendary of Lichfield from 1718 to 1720, and dean from 1720 to 1730.

Walmisley, ‘the most able scholar and the finest gentleman’ in the city according to Miss Seward, lived in the bishop's palace at Lichfield for thirty years; and Johnson, then a stripling at school, spent there, with David Garrick, ‘many cheerful and instructive hours, with companions such as are not often found.’ He was ‘a whig with all the virulence and malevolence of his party,’ but polite and learned, so that Johnson could not name ‘a man of equal knowledge,’ and the benefit of this intercourse remained to him throughout life. He endeavoured in 1735 to procure for Johnson the mastership of a school at Solihull, near Warwick, but without success. An abiding tribute to his memory was paid by Johnson in his ‘Life’ of Edmund Smith (Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, ii. 57–8).

In April 1736 Walmisley, ‘being tired since the death of my brother of living quite alone,’ married Magdalen, commonly called Margaret or Margery, Aston, fourth of the eight daughters of Sir Thomas Aston, bart., of Aston, Cheshire. His marriage was said to have extinguished certain expectations entertained by Garrick of a ‘settlement’ from his friend. Walmisley died at Lichfield on 3 Aug. 1751, and his widow died on 11 Nov. 1786, aged 77. Both are buried in a vault near the south side of the west door in Lichfield Cathedral. A poetical epitaph by Thomas Seward [q. v.] was inscribed on a temporary monument ‘which stood over the grave during a twelvemonth after his decease;’ it is printed in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (1785, i. 166). It is said that Johnson promised to write an epitaph for him, but procrastinated until it was too late; he may be acquitted of any share in the composition printed as his in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (1797, ii. 726). A prose inscription to Walmisley's memory is on the south side of the west door of Lichfield Cathedral. Johnson's eulogy from his ‘Life’ of Smith was also inscribed on an adjoining monument. Walmisley's library was sold by Thomas Osborne of Gray's Inn in 1756. The Latin translation of Byrom's verses, beginning ‘My time, O ye muses,’ printed in the ‘Gentle-