Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/409

 in a gentleman's family. This situation he also resigned soon afterwards on religious grounds, and shortly after was arrested while celebrating mass and committed on 14 May 1561 as ‘a pore prist’ to the Fleet prison, where he lived on charity like other pauper prisoners (cf. Harl. MS. 360, f. 7). In 1563, during a severe visitation of the plague in London, he was removed to Cambridgeshire for a short time with the other prisoners in the custody of Tyrrel, the warder of the Fleet. At his urgent request Woodhouse was admitted to the Society of Jesus in 1572. He was so animated by his admission that on 19 Nov. 1572 he wrote to Cecil exhorting him to persuade Elizabeth to submit to the pope. The original is preserved in the British Museum (Lansdowne MS. 99, f. 1). He also wrote papers ‘persuading men to the true faith and obedience,’ which he signed with his name, tied to stones, and threw out of the prison window into the street. On 16 June 1573 he was tried for high treason in the Guildhall, London. He distinguished himself by his intrepid bearing and the frankness of his answers, was found guilty, and was executed at Tyburn on 19 June. Woodhouse was the first priest who suffered in Elizabeth's reign, and the first Roman catholic, with the exceptions of John Felton (d. 1570) [q. v.] and John Story [q. v.]

Two narratives of his life and martyrdom exist. The earlier, dated 1574, is contained in a small quarto volume of manuscripts, entitled ‘Anglia, Necrol. 1573–1651,’ in the archives of the Society of Jesus at Rome. In this account, which is written in Latin, he is called William Woodhouse. Three hundred and thirty verses are appended, written by him in prison. The second and fuller account is in English, and was sent to Rome by Henry Garnett [q. v.] It is now among the Stonyhurst manuscripts.

Woodhouse was included in the representation of the ‘Sufferings of the Holy Martyrs’ in England, painted by Nicholas Circiniani, in the English Church of the Most Holy Trinity at Rome, by order of Gregory XIII. The original painting was destroyed about the end of the eighteenth century, but engravings of it still exist (, Acts of English Martyrs, 1891, pp. 370–2).

[Foley's Records of the English Province, 1883, vii. 859–61, 967, 1257–67; Berselli's Vita del Beato Edmundo Campion, Rome, 1889, pp. 218–33; Stow's Annales, 1615, p. 676; Rambler, 1858, x. 207–12; Parsons's Elizabethæ Angliæ Reginæ hæresim Calvinianam propugnantis sævissimum in Catholicos sui regni edictum, 1592, p. 189.] 

WOODHOUSELEE,. [See, 1747–1813.]

WOODINGTON, WILLIAM FREDERICK (1806–1893), sculptor and painter, was born at Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, on 10 Feb. 1806. He came to London in 1815, and about 1820 was articled to Robert William Sievier [q. v.], who was at that time practising engraving, but who shortly afterwards abandoned that art in favour of sculpture, and in this was followed by his pupil. Woodington first appeared at the Royal Academy in 1825, and until 1882 was a frequent contributor of fancy figures and reliefs of sacred and poetical subjects which, though deficient in the highest qualities of the art, were composed with much grace and feeling. He also modelled many portrait busts. To the Westminster Hall competition of 1844 he sent ‘The Deluge’ and ‘Milton dictating to his Daughters,’ and in that for the Wellington monument in St. Paul's Cathedral he was awarded the second premium. He subsequently executed two of the reliefs on the walls of the consistory chapel in which the monument, the work of Alfred Stevens [q. v.], was temporarily placed. His other works in sculpture include the bronze relief of the battle of the Nile on the plinth of the Nelson column in Trafalgar Square, the statues of Columbus, Galileo, Drake, Cook, Ralegh, and Mercator on the colonnade of the Exchange buildings at Liverpool, and the colossal bust of Sir Joseph Paxton at the Crystal Palace. Woodington also practised painting, and frequently exhibited pictures of a similar class to his works in marble. In 1853 he sent to the Academy ‘The Angels directing the Shepherds to Bethlehem,’ in 1854 an illustration to Dante, and in 1855 ‘Job and his Friends;’ his ‘Love and Glory’ was engraved by J. Porter. For some years Woodington held the post of curator of the school of sculpture at the Royal Academy, and in 1876 he was elected an associate of that body. He died at his house at Brixton on 24 Dec. 1893, and was buried in Norwood cemetery.

[Daily Chron. 27 Dec. 1893; Times, 27 Dec. 1893; Athenæum, 30 Dec. 1893; Stannus's Alfred Stevens and his Work, 1891; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1893.] 

WOODLARK, ROBERT (d. 1479), founder of St. Catharine's College, Cam-bridge. [See .]

WOODLEY, GEORGE (1786–1846), poet and divine, born at Dartmouth, and baptised at Townstal church in that town on 3 April 1786, was the son of Richard Woodley, a