Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/180

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Markham
174
Markham


a staunch friend of Warren Hastings. His eldest son, William, who had been private secretary to Hastings, and was afterwards appointed resident at Benares, gave evidence at the trial in May 1792, and was cross-examined by Anstruther and Burke (Bond, Speeches of the Managers and Counsel in the Trial of Warren Hastings, 1859-61, vol. iii. pp. v-vi). The intemperate language which Markham used in reference to Burke's cross-examination of Auriol on 25 May 1793 (ib. pp. xxiii-iv) was brought under the notice of the House of Commons by Whitbread on 12 June following. After a debate, in which Windham, Dundas, Francis, Burke, and Fox took part, a motion for adjournment was carried, and the matter was allowed to drop (Parl. Hist. xxx. 983-94). On 24 March 1795, when the subject ot the present from the Nabob Wazir came under consideration, Markham expressed his opinion of the conduct of the trial in the strongest terms, and declared that Hastings had been 'treated not as if he were a gentleman, whose cause is before you, but as if you were trying a horse-stealer ' (Bond, vol. iv. p. lxi).

Markham died at his house in South Audley Street, London, on 3 Nov. 1807, aged 89, and was buried on the 11th of the same month in the north cloister of Westminster Abbey, where a monument was subsequently raised to his memory by his grandchildren.

Markham was a pompous and warm-tempered prelate, with a magnificent presence and almost martial bearing. According to Dr. Parr his 'powers of mind, reach of thought, memory, learning, scholarship, and taste were of the very first order; but he was indolent, and his composition wanted this powerful aiguillon' (History of the Markham Family, p. 66). Walpole calls him 'a pert, arrogant man' (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 311), and alludes to him as that 'warlike metropolitan archbishop Turpin' (Walpole, Letters, vii. 80-1). He is severely satirised in the twenty-first 'Probationary Ode' (The Bolliad, 1795, pp. 372-80). Markham married, on 16 June 1 759, Sarah, daughter of John Goddard, a wealthy English merchant of Rotterdam, by whom he had six sons—viz. (1) William, who died on 1 Jan. 1815 ; (2) John [q. v.], an admiral of the blue in the royal navy; (3) George, who became dean of York, and died on 30 Sept. 1822; (4) David, a lieutenant-colonel of the 20th regiment of foot, who was killed in the island of St. Domingo on 26 March 1795, while directing an attack against a fort near Port-au-Prince; (5) Robert, archdeacon of York and rector of Bolton Percy, Yorkshire, who died on 17 July 1837; and (6) Osborne, comptroller of the barrack department and M.P. for Calne, who died on 22 Oct. 1827—and seven daughters, viz. (1) Henrietta Sarah, who married Ewan Law of Horsted, Sussex, on 28 June' 1784, and died on 24 April 1829; (2) Elizabeth Katherine, who became the second wife of William Barnett of Little Missenden Abbey, Buckinghamshire, on 13 April 1796, and died at Florence on 22 April 1820; (3) Alicia Harrietts, who married the Rev. H. Foster Mills, rector of Elmley, Yorkshire, on 27 Nov. 1794, and died on 29 Feb. 1840; (4) Georgina, who died unmarried on 28 Mav 1793, aged 21; (5) Frederica, who married William, third earl of Mansfield, on 16 Sept. 1797, and died on 29 April 1860; (6) Anne Katherine, who died unmarried on 3 Oct. 1808, aged 30; and (7) Cecilia, who married the Rev. Robert Philip Goodenough, rector of Carlton, Nottinghamshire, on 6 Dec. 1808, and died on 30 March 1865. Markham's widow died in Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square, London, on 26 Jan. 1814, aged 75, and was buried in the north cloister of Westminster Abbey on 3 Feb. following.

Markham was at one time an intimate friend of Edmund Burke [q. v.] Their acquaintance began in 1753, and in 1758 Markham stood godfather to Burke's onlv son, Richard. An interesting letter from Markham to the Duchess of Queensberry, dated 25 Sept. 1759, soliciting her influence with Pitt to procure the British consulship at Madrid for Burke, is printed among the 'Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham,' 1838, i. 430-3. Markham appears to have assisted Burke in his work for the 'Annual Register,' and to have corrected and revised the 'Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful,' London, 1756, 8vo. In reply to the censures of Markham, who believed him to be the author of 'Junius's Letters,' Burke wrote an elaborate defence of his own conduct (Burke, Correspondence, i. 276-338). Their friendship was finally broken off by the trial of Warren Hastings [q. v.]

Markham's portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1760) hangs in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford. Another, painted by the same artist in 1776, was lent to the Winter Exhibition of the Old Masters in 1876 by the Archbishop of York (Catalogue, No. 28). There is a portrait by Hoppner (1799) at Windsor Castle, a bust in the library of Christ Church, Oxford, and another portrait at Westminster School. There are also engravings of Markham by J. R. Smith, Fisher, and S. W. Reynolds after Sir Joshua, by James Ward after Romney, and by Heath after Hoppner.