the English college at Rome. Cardinal Acton was the interpreter and only witness of Gregory XVI in the important interview which took place in 1845 between that pontiff and the emperor Nicholas I of Russia. Immediately after the conference the cardinal wrote down, at the pope's request, a minute account of it; but he never allowed it to be seen. Every affair of consequence relating to England and its dependencies was referred by the pope to Cardinal Acton, and to his zeal, previously to his elevation to the sacred college, was mainly due the division of this country (in 1840) into eight catholic districts or vicariates apostolic. Previously there had been only four vicariates created by Innocent XI in 1688; and it may be mentioned that the increase in their number was the prelude to the restoration of the Roman catholic hierarchy by Pius IX in 1850. Cardinal Acton's health, never very strong, began to decline, and he sought refuge first at Palermo and then at Naples, where he died in the Jesuits' convent 23 June 1847.
[Catholic Directory (1843), 149 (with portrait); Card. Wiseman's Recollections of the last four Popes (1858), 475–480; Ferdinando Amarante, Sonnetti dedicati a Miledi Marianna Acton, madre del Cardinale; British Catholicity, its Position and Wants, addressed to Cardinal Acton (Edinb. 1844); Gent. Mag. N. S. xxviii. 670; Foster's Peerage (1881), 9; Lodge's Genealogy of the Peerage and Baronetage (1859), 592.]
ACTON, EDWARD (d. 1707), captain in the navy, presumably a grandson of Sir Edward Acton, the first baronet, attained that rank in October 1694, and continued in active service through the war that was then raging. In 1702 he went out to the West Indies in command of the Bristol, and in the following spring was sent home with the three captains, Kirkby, Wade, and Constable, the two former of whom had been sentenced to death for their misconduct towards Vice-Admiral Benbow. Orders in anticipation had been sent down to the several ports that the sentence was to be carried into execution without delay; and the two culprits were accordingly shot on board the Bristol on 18 April 1703, two days after her arrival in Plymouth Sound. In 1704 Acton commanded the Kingston of sixty guns, and took part in the capture of Gibraltar and the battle of Malaga [see Rooke, Sir George]. On this last occasion, having expended the whole of his ammunition, he drew out of the line, for doing which he was afterwards tried but fully acquitted, and the following year commanded the Grafton in the Mediterranean under Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Towards the end of 1706 he returned to England, and his ship having been refitted he joined the squadron under Captain Clements in the Hampton Court, which sailed from the Downs on 1 May 1707 with the Lisbon and West India trade in convoy. On the next day off Dungeness they fell in with a numerically superior French squadron of frigates and privateers, commanded by the Count Forbin. Of the three English ships the Grafton and Hampton Court were boarded by several of the enemy, and carried by force of numbers, Captain Acton being killed, and Captain Clements mortally wounded, shot through a port by Forbin himself. The Royal Oak made good her escape in an almost sinking condition; but several of the merchant ships were captured.
[Official letters, &c., in the Public Record Office; Mémoires du Comte de Forbin (1729), ii. 231.]
ACTON, ELIZA (1799–1859), authoress, daughter of John Acton, brewer, of Hastings, afterwards of Ipswich, Suffolk, was born at Battle, Sussex, 17 April, 1799. She was of delicate health in her youth, and was taken abroad. Whilst in Paris, she became engaged to be married to an officer in the French army; but this marriage did not take place, and she returned to England, where she published, by subscription, a volume of poems, at Ipswich, in 1826. A second edition, again of 500 copies and by subscription, was published in 1827. In 1835 Miss Acton contributed a poem, ‘The Two Portraits,’ anonymously, to the ‘Sudbury Pocket Book.’ In 1836, in the same annual, she published ‘Original Poetry by Miss Acton, author of the “Two Portraits.”’ In 1837 she was living at Bordyke House, Tunbridge; and on the arrival of Queen Adelaide in that town shortly after the death of William IV, Miss Acton presented the queen with some verses commemorating her devoted attendance on her husband during his last illness. In 1838 she published the ‘Chronicles of Castel-Framlingham’ in ‘Fulcher's Sudbury Journal.’ In 1842 she published another poem, ‘The Voice of the North,’ a welcome to Queen Victoria on her first Scotch visit. In 1845, after further fugitive poems, Miss Acton had completed the popular work, ‘Modern Cookery,’ with which she is chiefly associated; a second and a third edition of it were called for the same year; a fourth and fifth in 1846; with numerous editions in successive years. In May 1857 she brought out her last work, ‘The English Bread-Book,’ treating of the various ways of making bread, and of the constituent parts of various bread-stuffs.
