of some strange shells in a dealer's window. He went in, and found that the specimens were part of a vast collection made by a Belgian naturalist named Reigen at Mazatlan in California. The collector had died, leaving his shells unsorted and unnamed. Carpenter bought them for 50l. There were fourteen tons of shells, each ton occupying forty cubic feet. The examination, description, naming, and classification of these shells was the chief work of the rest of Carpenter's life. By the comparison of hundreds of examples, 104 previous species were shown to be mere varieties, while 222 new species were added to the catalogue of the mollusca. Thenceforward, though he sometimes preached, made speeches, and wrote pamphlets, most of Carpenter's time was given to shells, and even when he received calls or paid visits he would wash and pack up shells during conversation. Their pecuniary value when named and arranged in series was great, but he never tried to grow rich by them, and his whole endeavour was to spread the knowledge of them and to supply as many public institutions as possible with complete collections of Mazatlan mollusca. A full report on them occupies 209 pages of the ‘British Association Reports’ for 1856, and further details are to be found in the same reports for 1863, and in the ‘Smithsonian Reports’ for 1860. He visited America in 1858, and in 1860, after his return to England, married at Manchester Miss Minnie Meyer. At the conclusion of the ceremony the wedded pair formally adopted a boy whom Carpenter had found in a refuge at Baltimore. In 1865 he sailed with wife and adopted son for America, settled in Montreal, and there lived to the end of his days. He took pupils, ceased to be a presbyterian, and became reconciled to the doctrines of the Anglican church. Shells occupied most of his time, and he was working at the Chitonidæ, of which he had formed a great collection, when he was seized with an acute illness, and died on 24 May 1877. Carpenter once spoke of himself as ‘a born teacher, a naturalist by chance.’ The description should have been reversed. He had been fond of shells and of natural history from early boyhood, and the chance was only in the incident which gave him the opportunity of following his natural bent. His teaching was spoiled by his ignorance of what was ludicrous, and he used to imitate the movements of polyps with his arms and legs in a way which fixed his own grotesque attitudes on the memory of his pupils, but which drove their attention away from polyps. He was a virtuous man and a laborious, but was neither judicious nor profound.
[Memoirs (with portrait), edited by R. L. Carpenter, 1880; British Association Reports, 1856, &c.; personal knowledge.]
CARPENTER, RICHARD (1575–1627), divine, was born in Cornwall in 1575. He matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, on 28 May 1592, and took his degrees of B.A. on 19 Feb. 1595–6, B.D. 25 June 1611, and D.D. 10 Feb. 1616–17. He was elected to a Cornish fellowship at his college on 30 June 1596, and retained it until 30 June 1606, during which time he devoted his attention, under the advice of Thomas Holland, the rector of Exeter College, to the study of theology, and became noted for his preaching powers. In 1606 he was appointed by Sir Robert Chichester to the rectories of Sherwell and Loxhore, near Barnstaple, and it has been suggested that he was the Richard Carpenter who from 1601 to 1626 held the vicarage of Collumpton. While he was a tutor at Oxford, Christopher Trevelyan, a son of John Trevelyan of Nettlecombe, Somersetshire, who married Urith, daughter of Sir John Chichester of Devonshire, was among his pupils, and through this introduction to these families Carpenter married Susanna, his pupil's youngest sister, and obtained his benefice from Sir Robert Chichester. He died on 18 Dec. 1627, and was buried in the chancel of Loxhore Church, where a monument was erected to his memory.
Carpenter's literary productions were confined to theology. He was the author of: 1. ‘A Sermon preached at the Funeral Solemnities of Sir Arthur Ackland,’ 9 Jan. 1611–12. 2. ‘A Pastoral Charge at the Triennial Visitation of the Bishop of Exon. at Barnstaple,’ 1616. 3. ‘Christ's Larum Bell of Love resounded,’ 1616. 4. ‘The Concionable Christian,’ three sermons preached before the judges of the circuit in 1620, London, 1623. His learning is highly praised by Charles Fitzgeoffry in his ‘Affaniæ,’ and two letters addressed to him by Degory Wheare in 1603 and 1621 are in the ‘Epistolæ Eucharisticæ’ subjoined to the latter's ‘Pietas erga Benefactores,’ 1628. Some verses by Carpenter are printed in the ‘Funebre Officium in memoriam Elizabethæ Angliæ reginæ’ of the university of Oxford, 1603, and in the collection (‘Pietas erga Jacobum Angliæ regem’) with which that body in the same year welcomed the new king.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 418; Boase's Reg. of Exeter Coll. pp. 52–3, 210; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. pp. 63, 1115; Trevelyan Papers, pt. iii. (Camden Soc. 1872), pp. xxvi, 77, 84, 110–12, 138–40; Arber's Stationers' Registers, iii. 496, 596, iv. 81.]
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