mously published, on the ‘Cases argued and adjudged in the High Court of Chancery.’ For some years Acherley was engaged in disputing the will of Thomas Vernon, who died in 1721, by which the wife of the former inherited an annuity of 200l., and his daughter Letitia received a legacy of 6,000l. The case was finally given against Acherley, on an appeal before the House of Lords, on 4 Feb. 1725.
Acherley was probably the first person who, in 1712, advised the moving of the writ for bringing over the electoral prince, afterwards George II, to take his place in the House of Lords as Duke of Cambridge; but the intrigues in which he indulged for the furtherance of this object were cut short by the death of Queen Anne, 1 Aug. 1714. Thereafter he pressed Barons Leibnitz and Bothmer for professional advancement in recognition of his admitted services to the house of Hanover. Down to 1731, however, he met with no substantial reward, and he appears to have passed his later years as an obscure and disappointed man. He died on Wednesday, 16 April 1740, ‘in an advanced age, at his house in Greenwich’ (London Daily Post, 21 March 1740).
Acherley's reputation rests upon his political, legal, and constitutional treatises, which have now, by lapse of time and the development of methods, been largely superseded. He believed in an extreme form of the ‘social contract’ theory. The most elaborate of his works is ‘The Britannic Constitution; or, the Fundamental Form of Government in Britain,’ fol. London, 1727, which was written to demonstrate the constitutional fitness of the accession of William III, and of the Hanoverian succession; a second edition, issued in 1759, incorporated ‘Reasons for Uniformity in the State, being a Supplement to the Britannic Constitution,’ which first appeared in 1741. Another work of Acherley's is entitled ‘Free Parliaments; or, an Argument on their Constitution: proving some of their powers to be independent. To which is added an Appendix containing several original Letters and Papers which passed between the Court of Hanover and a gentleman at London, in the years 1713 and 1714, touching the right of the Duke of Cambridge to reside in England and sit in Parliament. By the author of the Britannic Constitution,’ 8vo, London, 1731. Also Acherley is credited with the authorship of an anonymous pamphlet of forty-six pages, called ‘The Jurisdiction of the Chancery as a Court of Equity researched,’ 8vo, London, 1733, third edition, 1736.
[Appeals to the House of Lords, 1725; Appendix to Acherley's Free Parliaments, 1731; Nash's History and Antiquities of Worcestershire, 1781, vol. i.; Kemble's State Papers and Correspondence, London, 1857.]
ACKERMANN, RUDOLPH (1764–1834), fine-art publisher and bookseller, was born 20 April 1764, at Stolberg in Saxony. His father, a coach-builder and harness-maker, removed in 1775 to Schneeberg, where Rudolph received his education and entered his father's workshop. But he did not long follow this occupation. After visiting Dresden and other German towns, he settled for some time in Paris, whence he proceeded to London. Here for about ten years he was engaged in making designs for many of the principal coach-builders. In 1795 he married an Englishwoman and set up a print-shop at 96 Strand, removing the following year to No. 101, where he had already revived a drawing-school established by Wm. Shipley, the founder of the Society of Arts. In consequence of the increase of Ackermann's publishing business the school was closed in 1806, being at that time frequented by eighty pupils whose instruction was attended to by three masters. His extensive trade in fancy articles had given employment for some years to many French émigrés.
Ackermann's ingenuity and enterprise were not directed to fine-art matters alone. In 1801 he patented a method to render paper, cloth, and other substances waterproof, and erected a factory at Chelsea. He was among the first of private individuals to illuminate his place of business with gas, and between 1818 and 1820 was occupied with a patent for movable carriage axles. The preparation of Lord Nelson's funeral car (1805) was entrusted to his skill. The establishment of lithography as a fine art in this country is due to him. Having been introduced as a mechanical process by Mr. Andrée of Offenbach in 1801 (Repository of Arts, &c., 1817, p. 225), it was chiefly used for copying purposes until 1817, when Ackermann set up a press, engaged Prout and other eminent artists, and made large use of lithography in his ‘Repository’ and other publications. ‘A complete Course of Lithography, by J. A. Senefelder, translated from the German by A. S[chlichtegroll],’ 4to, was issued in 1819 by Ackermann, who had visited the inventor the year before, and who narrates in a preliminary ‘advertisement’ his experience of the method. The volume includes specimens of drawings executed at his press.
The distress in Germany after the battle of Leipzig gave rise to a movement for the relief of the sufferers, mainly founded by Ackermann; and for two years he devoted
