Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/192

 rebel army entered Lancashire, where he counted on support from his relatives the Towneleys and others of the gentry (, Lancashire Memorials of the Rebellion of 1715, ii. 27, 61, Chetham Soc.) He took no part in the fighting at Preston on 12 Nov., and was one of the first to urge Forster next day to surrender. He was brought to London with the other prisoners, and was attainted of high treason on 9 Feb. 1716. He pleaded guilty at his trial, but appealed for mercy on the ground that ‘as he was the last who took up arms, so he was the first who procured a meeting of the chief persons among them, in order to lay them down.’ He was sentenced to death, but was reprieved, and was admitted on 22 Nov. 1717 to the benefit of the act of pardon so far as life and liberty were concerned (Lords' Journals, xx. 557). A petition which he presented on 17 Feb. 1719 for an allowance from his late wife's property to support himself and ‘his distressed family’ was negatived by the House of Commons; but a later petition for the removal of his disabilities was granted, and an act to that effect was passed on 17 May 1733 (Commons' Journals, xix. 103–4, xxii. 62, 154). He died at Bath on 19 April 1743, aged 65, and was buried at Nunnington in Yorkshire, where his second wife had inherited an estate (Gent. Mag. 1743, p. 218; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. ix. 550). Patten speaks with contempt of his conduct as a military leader, a role for which he was unfitted by temperament (Hist. of the late Rebellion, 2nd edit. 1717, pp. 125, &c.). Roger Gale described him in 1728 as ‘an infirm sort of a gentleman and a perfect valetudinarian’ (, Memoirs, i. 200, Surtees Soc.) He married, first, in 1700, Jane, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Tempest, bart. of Stella, co. Durham, and had by her (who died on 9 Sept. 1714) three sons and five daughters. He married, secondly, about July 1718, Catherine, daughter (and coheiress in 1739) of Richard Graham, viscount Preston [q. v.]; she survived him, without children, dying in 1757 (, Peerage of Scotland, ed. Wood, ii. 375). After his death his eldest son, Henry Francis, was commonly called Lord Widdrington, and, dying at Turnham Green in 1774, was confused with his father in obituaries (see Gent. Mag. 1774, p. 446; Ann. Reg. 1774, p. 196).

 WIDVILE. [See .]

WIFFEN, BENJAMIN BARRON (1794–1867), biographer of early Spanish reformers, second son of John Wiffen, ironmonger, by his wife Elizabeth (Pattison), was born at Woburn, Bedfordshire, in 1794. His elder brother was Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen [q. v.] He followed his brother to Ackworth school in 1803; on leaving in 1808 he went into his father's business, and remained in it at Woburn till 1838, when his health failed, and he retired to Mount Pleasant, near Woburn. His literary tastes were encouraged by his brother, and by Richard Thomas How of Aspley Guise, Bedfordshire, owner of a remarkable library (collected by his father, Richard How [1727–1801], editor of Lady Rachel Russell's ‘Letters’). How, portrayed in Wiffen's posthumous poem, ‘The Quaker Squire,’ first gave him the hint of an ‘old work, by a Spaniard [one of the works of Juan de Valdés], which represented essentially the principles of George Fox.’

Early in 1839 Luis de Usóz y Rio (d. 13 Aug. 1835, aged 59) came to London from Madrid, and was introduced by George Borrow [q. v.] to Josiah Forster. When Wiffen came up to the Friends' yearly meeting in Whitweek, Forster told him that Usóz y Rio had inquired after his brother as a translator of Spanish poetry. At Forster's request he called on Usóz y Rio in Jermyn Street, when there at once sprang up a lifelong friendship between them, and ‘henceforward Spain took entire possession’ of Wiffen. Towards the close of 1839 he made his first visit to Spain with George William Alexander, as a deputation to forward the abolition of the slave trade. It was in the summer of 1841, during a visit of Usóz y Rio to Mount Pleasant, that ‘they formed the common purpose to rescue from oblivion the works of the early Spanish reformers.’ In 1842 he accompanied Alexander a second time to Spain and Portugal; on his return he began his book-hunting, of which he gives a most interesting account (‘Notices and Experiences,’ printed by Boehmer in Bibliotheca Wiffeniana, 1874, i. 29–57; and partly embodied in Life). He obtained some unique treasures. Many rare works he himself copied line for line; of others he obtained transcripts. Without his aid the collection of ‘Obras Antiguas de los Españoles Reformados’ (1847–65, 16mo and 8vo, 20 vols.) could not have been produced. The volumes were privately printed under his superintendence. He himself edited vol. ii., the ‘Epistola 