Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/447

 the first volume of which was published in 1867. Returning to India in 1876, he was employed to report on the records in the home and foreign departments at Calcutta; and, besides submitting reports on his investigations, compiled two volumes, which he was allowed to publish. He also prepared and published under the authority of government a ‘History of the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi.’ In 1891 he retired from the service. He died at Ramsgate on 13 Jan. 1897.

He married, on 15 Jan. 1852, Emily, daughter of Robert Roe, by whom he had three surviving sons—Stephen, Owen Edleston (late captain Leicestershire regiment), and Albert Fordyce; and one daughter, Edith.

He wrote, besides smaller text-books and articles in the ‘Calcutta Review,’ ‘Asiatic Quarterly,’ and other periodicals, the following: 1. ‘Analysis and Summary of Herodotus,’ 1848. 2. ‘Analysis and Summary of Old Testament History,’ 1849. 3. ‘Analysis and Summary of Thucydides,’ 1850. 4. ‘Analysis and Summary of New Testament History,’ 1852. 5. ‘Geography of Herodotus,’ 1854. 6. ‘Life and Travels of Herodotus,’ 1855. 7. ‘History of Madras in the Olden Time, 1639 to 1748: compiled from the Government Records,’ 1860–2, 3 vols. 8. ‘History of India,’ 1867–81, 4 vols. 9. ‘Summary of Affairs of the Government of India in the Foreign Department from 1864 to 1869,’ 1869. 10. ‘Early Records of British India,’ 1877. 11. ‘History of the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi,’ 1877. 12. ‘Summary of Affairs in Native States, 1818 to 1835,’ 1878. 13. ‘Summary of Affairs in Mahratta States, 1627 to 1858,’ 1878. 14. ‘Short History of India and the Frontier States,’ 1880. 15. ‘Tales from Indian History,’ 1882. 16. ‘India under British Rule,’ 1886.

[Times, 14 Jan. 1897; Indian official lists and private papers.]  WHEELER, JOHN (fl. 1601–1608), secretary of the Merchant Adventurers' Company, was probably born at Great Yarmouth. On the death of George Gilpin in 1602, he became a candidate for the post of councillor to the council of estate in the Low Countries. He may be identical with the John Wheeler who in 1615 was admitted to the East India Company, with liberty to venture 200l. in the joint stock. In 1601 he published ‘A Treatise of Commerce, wherein are shewed the Commodities arising from a well ordered and ruled Trade,’ London (4to; another edition, Middelburg, 1601, 4to). His work, which contains much historical information, is an elaborate defence of the policy of the Merchant Adventurers' Company against the objections of the Hanseatic merchants and other opponents. He also collected and digested ‘The Lawes, Customes, and Ordinances of the Fellowshippe of Merchantes Adventurers of the Realm of England’ (1608, Brit. Museum Addit. MS. 18913).

[State Papers, Dom. Elizabeth, cclxxxii. 68, cclxxxiii. 74, cclxxxv. 23, 48; Cal. State Papers, East Indies, China, and Japan, 1513–16, No. 999, East Indies and Persia, 1630–4, No. 60; Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, ii. 219–21; Schanz's Englische Handelspolitik, i. 333–5; Gross's Gild Merchant, i. 148, 149; Hewins's English Trade and Finance, p. xvi; Cunningham's Growth of English Industry and Commerce (Modern Times), pp. 119, 120.]  WHEELER, MAURICE (1648?–1727), divine and almanac-maker, born in 1647 or 1648, was son of Maurice Wheeler ‘plebeius,’ who in 1664 was living at St. Giles (Wimborne) in Dorset. On 1 April 1664 he entered as a batteler at New Inn Hall, Oxford, and took the degrees of B.A. on 17 Oct. 1667, and of M.A. on 5 July 1670. At the latter date he had recently been appointed chaplain at Christ Church, and in the same year he became rector of St. Ebbe's at Oxford. His celebrated almanac (see below) was published in 1673, and at about this time he must have married, for a monument at St. Ebbe's records the death of twin sons of the rector (Maurice and William) on 25 June 1680. Probably this loss determined him to leave Oxford, for we find him holding the rectory of Sibbertoft in Northamptonshire from 1680 till 1684, in which year, on 11 Sept., he was appointed master of the collegiate or cathedral school at Gloucester, a position he probably held till 1707–8, when he was made prebendary of Lincoln. In 1686 he established a library at the school. His other preferments were the rectory of Wappenham in Northamptonshire (17 May 1712–15) and the rectory of Thorp Mandeville in the same county (from 12 Nov. 1720 till his death in 1727). On 7 Oct. 1727 he was buried in his former parish church at Wappenham. Baker, in his ‘Northamptonshire’ (i. 722), states that he was tutor to William Wake [q. v.] (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury), no doubt while rector of St. Ebbe's.

In 1673 Wheeler published anonymously at the Sheldonian Press at Oxford ‘The Oxford Almanac for … 1673 … Calculated for the meridian of Oxford …,’ a small octavo, containing, besides the bare almanac, a Roman calendar, chronological