the whole of his large fortune. To his children by his first marriage she behaved with much generosity. On 16 June 1827, at her house in Stratton Street, she married William Aubrey de Vere, ninth duke of St. Albans. She died in Stratton Street, 6 Aug. 1837. She was a handsome brunette, with a figure inclining slightly to portliness, great vivacity and animal spirits, generous, ostentatious, and somewhat fiery in temper. As an actress she came in the second line, being eclipsed by Mrs. Jordan. Scott, whom she visited at Abbotsford, regarded her as a kind, friendly woman, ‘without either affectation or insolence in the display of her wealth.’ Dibdin speaks of her as a great favourite with the public. A portrait of her by Romney was exhibited at Burlington House in 1887. Portraits of her by Sir William Beechey and by Masquerier (as Mrs. Page) belonged to the Baroness Burdett Coutts: the former was engraved by T. Woolnoth. An engraving of her as Cherry was very popular.
[A full but not wholly trustworthy memoir of Mrs. Mellon, by Mrs. Cornwell Harries (afterwards Mrs. Baron Wilson), was published, in 2 vols. 8vo, in 1839, and again in 1886. Scurrilous memoirs of her and her first husband were written with a view principally to extort money. These are fully described in Mr. Lowe's Bibliographical Account of the English Theatre. The Secret Memoirs of Harriott Pumpkin, a Celebrated Actress, &c., is the most infamous of these. It was bought up and destroyed, and copies are scarce and costly. Genest's Account of the English Stage mentions many of her performances, but gives no list. See also Boaden's Life of Mrs. Jordan; Clark Russell's Representative Actors; Dibdin's History of the Stage; the Life of Reynolds; Lockhart's Life of Scott; Notes and Queries, 6th and 7th ser.; Memoir of Charles Mathews; Gent. Mag. for October 1837, and Georgian Era.]
MELLOR, Sir JOHN (1809–1887), judge, son of John Mellor, a member of an old South Lancashire family, and partner in the firm of Gee, Mellor, Kershaw & Co., who resided at Leicester, and was mayor of the borough and a justice of the peace there, was born at Hollinwood House, Oldham, 1 Jan. 1809. He was educated at the Leicester grammar school, and afterwards under Charles Berry, a unitarian minister of Leicester. Being unwilling to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles, he abandoned his original intention of entering at Lincoln College, Oxford, and after reading for a time in the office of a Leicester attorney, he entered as a student at the Inner Temple in 1828, read in the chambers of Thomas Chitty for four years, attended John Austin's lectures at University College, and was called to the bar 7 June 1833. He joined the midland circuit, and practised at Leicester borough and Warwick sessions, at assizes, and at the parliamentary bar. After becoming a queen's counsel in 1851 he became leader of the circuit, and also had a fair London practice. From 1849 to 1852 he was recorder of Warwick, and from 1855 to 1861 recorder of Leicester. He stood as a liberal unsuccessfully for Warwick in 1852, and for Coventry in 1857, but late in 1857 he was elected for Great Yarmouth, and at the general election of 1859 was returned for Nottingham. He spoke little in parliament. On 3 Dec. 1861 he succeeded Mr. Justice Hill in the queen's bench and was knighted. He was a member of the special commission which tried the Fenian prisoners at Manchester in 1867 and of the court which tried Arthur Orton, alias Castro, for perjury in the Tichborne case in 1873. In June 1879 being troubled with increasing deafness, he retired on a pension and was sworn of the privy council. Thereafter he often attended the judicial committee, went the northern circuit once as commissioner of assize, and frequently acted as an arbitrator in important cases. He died at his house, 16 Sussex Square, Bayswater, on 26 April 1887, and was buried at Dover, where he had lived in his later years, on 30 April. He married in 1833 Elizabeth Cooke, only daughter of William Moseley of Peckham, Surrey, by whom he had eight sons, John William, a queen's counsel, a member of the privy council, judge advocate-general from 1880 to 1885, and chairman of committees in the House of Commons in 1893; James Robert, master of the crown office; and six others. He published two lectures on the ‘Christian Church before the Reformation,’ 1857, and ‘The Life and Times of John Selden,’ and a pamphlet advocating the abolition of oaths in courts of law or in parliament in 1882.
[Foss's Judges of England; Law Times, 7 May 1887; Times, 25 April 1887; Solicitors' Journal, 30 April 1887.]
MELMOTH, COURTNEY (1749–1814), miscellaneous writer. [See Pratt, Samuel Jackson.]
MELMOTH, WILLIAM, the elder (1666–1743), religious writer and lawyer, born in 1666, was called to the bar on 29 May 1693. His temperament, even in early life, was meditative and introspective (Memoir, pp. 2–3), with a leaning to casuistry, which finds curious expression in some letters which he addressed to his friend John Norris (1657–1711) [q. v.], rector of Bemerton, Wiltshire, when it became necessary to take the oaths to William III (March–May 1693). On 5 June 1699 he was admitted
