of 300 tons. For this he received the special thanks of congress and was made a brigadier-general for the middle department. Shortly afterwards he assumed the chief command at New York, and began the work of fortifying the city and harbour. For a short time he went to New Jersey to put the eastern province in a posture of defence, but he again returned and held command of the city till the arrival of General Washington. At the battle of Long Island he was taken prisoner, but he was soon exchanged, and in February 1777 was promoted major-general. Though his subsequent achievements in the war were not of a strikingly brilliant character, they were of solid and substantial importance, his system of careful organisation and his unfailing watchfulness enabling him to present a front of resistance to the enemy, which was of immense service to the American cause. At the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, which resulted in favour of the British, he conducted himself with great discretion; at the battle of Monmouth he so placed the batteries of his division that they played with great effect on the advancing British troops, and he also repulsed with heavy loss an attempt that was made to turn his flank. While in command in New Jersey in 1779, he surprised with great boldness a detachment of British troops at Powles' Hook. In 1781 he was appointed to the command in Albany, and on 1 Nov. had drawn out an order of battle in expectation of on attempt of the enemy at Saratoga, when news of the surrender of the southern army to General Washington induced them to change their plans. During the remainder of the war his command was not connected with any incident of importance. He died at Albany of a violent attack of gout, brought on by fatigue of body and mind, on 15 Jan. 1783, five days before an agreement was entered into between the two countries for a cessation of hostilities. Alexander was the author of ‘The Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated,’ and ‘An Account of the Comet of June and July 1770.’
[Life of William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, by his grandson, William Alexander Duer, LL.D., forming vol. ii. of Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society (1847); Charles Rogers's House of Alexander, i. 282–5 (1877).]
ALEXANDER, WILLIAM (1767–1816), artist, and first keeper of prints and drawings in the British Museum, was born at Maidstone 10 April 1767. He became a student at the Royal Academy in 1784, and in 1792 proceeded with Lord Macartney's embassy to China as junior draughtsman. All the drawings illustrative of the expedition were made by him, in consequence, as it is stated, of the incompetence of his nominal superior. Some of them were published as illustrations of Sir George Staunton's account of the embassy in 1797; in 1798 Alexander himself published ‘Views of the Headlands, Islands, &c., taken during the voyage to China,’ and he also illustrated Barrow's ‘Travels in China,’ 1804, and ‘Voyage to Cochin China,’ 1806. In 1805 he published a volume of engravings illustrative of the Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum taken from the French expeditionary force; and in the same year appeared ‘The Costume of China, illustrated in forty-eight coloured engravings,’ accompanied by explanatory letterpress. He also completed the drawings from Daniell's sketches which accompanied Vancouver's ‘Voyage to the North Pacific,’ and published in 1813 ‘Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Austrians.’ In 1802 he had become professor of drawing at the military college at Great Marlow; and in 1808, some serious losses having shown the necessity for a more vigilant care of the prints and drawings in the British Museum, he was appointed their keeper, with the style and rank of assistant keeper of the antiquities department. His most important work at the museum was executing the drawings and superintending the engraving of the ancient marbles and terra-cottas comprised in the first four volumes of the great collection published by the trustees in 1810 and subsequent years. He died of brain-fever on 23 July 1816. Alexander was a first-rate draughtsman and excellent engraver; as a man he was amiable, charitable, and unassuming. He meditated a work on the ancient historical crosses of England, for which he had made extensive collections. A lithographed facsimile of his narrative of a journey to Beresford Hall in Derbyshire, the seat of Cotton the angler, was published by Russell Smith in 1841.
[Gent. Mag. lxxxvi. pt. ii. pp. 279–80, 369–371; Russell's History of Maidstone, pp. 397–8; Pikington's Dictionary of Painters.]
ALEYN, CHARLES (d. 1640), a poet, whose works have not been thought of sufficient merit to deserve a place amongst the collected works of English poets, was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and became a master in the school of Thomas Farnaby in St. Giles', Cripplegate. Subsequently he was private tutor to Sir Edward Sherburne, commissary-general and clerk of the ordnance. He died in 1640, and was buried in the
