posed lay there concealed. For his loyalty to the king he was kept for some time a prisoner in the Tower, and was excluded from all public offices. At the Restoration he was one of the deputies from the city to the Hague to attend on Charles II on his return from Breda to England, and with the rest of the deputies received the honour of knighthood, and after the Restoration was created a baronet June 13, 1660. During his lifetime he founded and endowed the free school of Wem, his native place, and presented to it the house in which he was born. He also founded the Arabic Lecture at Cambridge, to which he gave 40l. a year for ever, and, at the instigation of Mr. Wheelock, the first reader of Arabic, bore the expense of a translation of the Gospels into the Persian language for circulation in that country, with a view to the conversion of Mahometans. He is described as having been a devout member of the English church, and a regular communicant at the monthly celebrations of the sacrament. In his old age he was afflicted with the stone, which carried him off in his 82nd year, 24 Feb. 1667. Though four of his sons survived him, the baronetcy became extinct before the end of the last century, having been held by five of his descendants. He was buried at Sprowston in Norfolk (Blomefield's Norfolk, x. 460), and his funeral sermon was preached in the church of St. Catharine Cree, by his friend and former fellow-commissioner at the Hague, Dr. Nathaniel Hardy, 10 March following. This sermon, which contains a fulsome panegyric written in the worst taste, was printed in 1668. Most of it was reproduced in Wilford's ‘Memorials,’ p. 87, which is the authority for most of the facts of his life. It is said that the stone taken from him after his death weighed more than 25 ounces, and was preserved at Cambridge. There is a long Latin inscription on his monument at Sprowston, written in the style of the period, which may be seen in Wilford's ‘Memorials,’ appendix, pp. 27, 28.
[Wilford's Memorials of Eminent Persons; Peck's Desiderata Curiosa; Fuller's Worthies; Kimber's Baronetage; Domestic State Papers; Delaune's Angliæ Metropolis.]
ADAMS, THOMAS (1633?–1670), one of the ejected divines of 1662, was born at Woodchurch, Cheshire, where his father and grandfather, the owners of the advowson, were both beneficed. Entering Brasenose College in July 1649, he became B.A. on 8 Feb. 1652, and fellow the same year. He was M.A. on 28 June 1655, and lecturer-dean. After a distinguished career at college he was ejected from his fellowship for nonconformity in 1662, and he spent the remainder of his life as chaplain in private families. He died on 11 Dec. 1670. His learning, piety, good-humour, and diligence are celebrated by Calamy. He wrote: ‘Protestant Union, or Principles of Religion wherein the Dissenters agree with the Church of England;’ and ‘The Main Principles of Christian Religion,’ in 107 articles, 1676 and 1677, prefaced by his younger brother Richard (the ejected minister of St. Mildred's, Bread Street, London), and addressed to the inhabitants of Wirrall.
[Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), iv. 604; Fasti, ii. 170, 187; Calamy's Account (1713). p. 66; Harl. MS. 2163, 40,78; Gastrell's Not. Cestr. (Chetham Soc.) i. 180–1; Ormerod's Hist. Cheshire, ii. 524.]
ADAMS, THOMAS (1730?–1764), brigadier-general, commenced his military service in 1747 as a volunteer with the army under the command of the Duke of Cumberland in the Netherlands. On 25 June of the same year he obtained a commission as ensign in the 37th foot, in which regiment he rose to the rank of captain nine years later. He was subsequently transferred to the 84th foot, and was serving as a major in that regiment in India, when, in 1762, five years after the battle of Plassey, he was appointed to the command of the united forces of the crown and of the East India Company in Bengal. It was a very critical period in British Indian history. Notwithstanding the victory at Plassey, the British power was by no means so completely established as to be free from the risk of overthrow. Clive was in England. Mir Kásim, the astute minister and son-in-law of that Mir Jaffier whom Clive had placed upon the throne of Bengal in place of Suráj-ud-dowlah, had in turn displaced his master and had been formally invested as nawáb at Patna in the previous year. The vices of venality and corruption which Clive, himself by no means over-scrupulous, had described as the chief dangers to British rule in India, were rampant in the Calcutta council chamber. By the unscrupulous action of the council and by the rapacity of the subordinate servants of the company trade was disorganised, the nawáb was deprived of his revenues, and the British name was rapidly becoming synonymous with oppression and fraud. Disputes on the subject of transit duties and an unjustifiable attack made by Mr. Ellis, one of the members of the council, upon the city of Patna, followed by the death of Mr. Amyatt, who had been sent as an envoy to the nawáb, and who was killed by the troops
