Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/English, Josias
ENGLISH, JOSIAS (d. 1718?), amateur etcher, was a gentleman of independent means who resided at Mortlake. He was an intimate friend and a pupil of Francis Clein [q. v.], the manager of the Mortlake tapestry works, and etched numerous plates in the style of Hollar, after Clein's designs; these include a set of eleven plates, etched in 1653, entitled ‘Variæ Deorum Ethnicorum Effigies, or Divers Portraicturs of Heathen Gods,’ a set of four representing ‘The Seasons,’ a similar set of ‘The Four Cardinal Virtues,’ and a set of fourteen plates of grotesques and arabesques. His most important etching was ‘Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus,’ after Titian. He also etched a plate of a jovial man smoking, dated 1656, portraits of Richard Kirby, John Ogilby, and William Dobson; the last-named etching was long attributed to John Evelyn. There is in the British Museum a small mezzotint engraving by English. According to Vertue, English died about 1718, and left his property, which included a portrait of Clein and his wife and some samples of the Mortlake tapestry, to Mr. Crawley of Hempsted, Hertfordshire. His wife, Mary, died 21 March 1679–80, was buried at Barnes, Surrey.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painters; Vertue MSS. (Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 23068, &c.); Andersen's Handbuch für Kupferstichsämmler; Manning and Bray's Hist. of Surrey, iii. 322.]