HENSLOW, JOHN STEVENS (1796–1861), English botanist and geologist, was born at Rochester on the 6th of February 1796. From his father, who was a solicitor in that city, he imbibed a love of natural history which largely influenced his career. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated as sixteenth wrangler in 1818, the year in which Sedgwick became Woodwardian professor of geology. He accompanied Sedgwick in 1819 during a tour in the Isle of Wight, and there he learned his first lessons in geology. He also studied chemistry under Professor James Cumming and mineralogy under E. D. Clarke. In the autumn of 1819 he made some valuable observations on the geology of the Isle of Man (Trans. Geol. Soc., 1821), and in 1821 he investigated the geology of parts of Anglesey, the results being printed in the first volume of the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (1821), the foundation of which society was originated by Sedgwick and Henslow. Meanwhile, Henslow had studied mineralogy with considerable zeal, so that on the death of Clarke he was in 1822 appointed professor of mineralogy in the university at Cambridge. Two years later he took holy orders. Botany, however, had claimed much of his attention, and to this science he became more and more attached, so that he gladly resigned the chair of mineralogy in 1825, to succeed to that of botany. As a teacher both in the class-room and in the field he was eminently successful. To him Darwin largely owed his attachment to natural history, and also his introduction to Captain Fitzroy of H.M.S. “Beagle.” In 1832 Henslow was appointed vicar of Cholsey-cum-Moulsford in Berkshire, and in 1837 rector of Hitcham in Suffolk, and at this latter parish he lived and laboured, endeared to all who knew him, until the close of his life. His energies were devoted to the improvement of his parishioners, but his influence was felt far and wide. In 1843 he discovered nodules of coprolitic origin in the Red Crag at Felixstowe in Suffolk, and two years later he called attention to those also in the Cambridge Greensand and remarked that they might be of use in agriculture. Although Henslow derived no benefit, these discoveries led to the establishment of the phosphate industry in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire; and the works proved lucrative until the introduction of foreign phosphates. The museum at Ipswich, which was established in 1847, owed much to Henslow, who was elected president in 1850, and then superintended the arrangement of the collections. He died at Hitcham on the 16th of May 1861. His publications included A Catalogue of British Plants (1829; ed. 2, 1835); Principles of Descriptive and Physiological Botany (1835); Flora of Suffolk (with E. Skepper) (1860).
Memoir, by the Rev. Leonard Jenyns (1862).
HENSLOWE, PHILIP (d. 1616), English theatrical manager,
was the son of Edmund Henslowe of Lindfield, Sussex, master of
the game in Ashdown Forest and Broil Park. He was originally
a servant in the employment of the bailiff to Viscount Montague,
whose property included Montague House in Southwark, and his
duties led him to settle there before 1577. He subsequently
married the bailiff’s widow, and, with the fortune he got with her,
he developed into a clever business man and became a considerable
owner of Southwark property. He started his connexion
with the stage when, on the 24th of March 1584, he bought land
near what is now the southern end of Southwark Bridge, on
which stood the Little Rose playhouse, afterwards rebuilt as the
Rose. Successive companies played in it under Henslowe’s
financial management between 1592 and 1603. The theatre at
Newington Butts was also under him in 1594. A share of the
control in the Swan theatre, which like the Rose was on the
Bankside, fell to Henslowe before the close of the 16th century.
With the actor Edward Alleyn, who married his step-daughter
Joan Woodward, he built in Golden Lane, Cripplegate Without,
the Fortune Playhouse, opened in November 1600. In December
of 1594, they had secured the Paris Garden, a place for bear-baiting,
on the Bankside, and in 1604 they bought the office of
master of the royal game of bears, bulls and mastiffs from the
holder, and obtained a patent. Alleyn sold his share to Henslowe
in February 1610, and three years later Henslowe formed a new
partnership with Jacob Meade and built the Hope playhouse,
designed for stage performances as well as bull and bear-baiting,
and managed by Meade.
In Henslowe’s theatres were first produced many plays by the famous Elizabethan dramatists. What is known as “Henslowe’s Diary” contains some accounts referring to Ashdown Forest between 1576 and 1581, entered by John Henslowe, while the later entries by Philip Henslowe from 1592 to 1609 are those which throw light on the theatrical matters of the time, and which have been subjected to much controversial criticism as a result of injuries done to the manuscript. “Henslowe’s Diary” passed into the hands of Edward Alleyn, and thence into the Library of Dulwich College, where the manuscript remained intact for more than a hundred and fifty years. In 1780 Malone tried to borrow it, but it had been mislaid; in 1790 it was discovered and given into his charge. He was then at work on his Variorum Shakespeare. Malone had a transcript made of certain portions, and collated it with the original; and this transcript, with various notes and corrections by Malone, is now in the Dulwich Library. An abstract of this transcript he also published with his Variorum Shakespeare. The MS. of the diary was eventually returned to the library in 1812 by Malone’s executor. In 1840 it was lent to J. P. Collier, who in 1845 printed for the Shakespeare Society what purported to be a full edition, but it was afterwards shown by G. F. Warner (Catalogue of the Dulwich Library, 1881) that a number of forged interpolations have been made, the responsibility for which rests on Collier.
The complicated history of the forgeries and their detection has been exhaustively treated in Walter W. Greg’s edition of Henslowe’s Diary (London, 1904; enlarged 1908).
HENTY, GEORGE ALFRED (1832–1902), English war-correspondent
and author, was born at Trumpington, near
Cambridge, in December 1832, and educated at Westminster
School and Caius College, Cambridge. He served in the Crimea
in the Purveyor’s department, and after the peace filled various
posts in the department in England and Ireland, but he found the
routine little to his taste, and drifted into journalism for the
London Standard. He volunteered as Special Correspondent for
the Austro-Italian War of 1866, accompanied Garibaldi in his
Tirolese Campaign, followed Lord Napier through the mountain
gorges to Magdala, and Lord Wolseley across bush and swamp to
Kumassi. Next he reported the Franco-German War, starved in
Paris through the siege of the Commune, and then turned south to
rough it in the Pyrenees during the Carlist insurrection. He was
in Asiatic Russia at the time of the Khiva expedition, and later
saw the desperate hand-to-hand fighting of the Turks in the
Servian War. He found his real vocation in middle life. Invited
to edit a magazine for boys called the Union Jack, he became the
mainstay of the new periodical, to which he contributed several
serials in succession. The stories pleased their public, and had
ever increasing circulation in book form, until Henty became
a name to conjure with in juvenile circles. Altogether he wrote
about eighty of these books. Henty was an enthusiastic yachtsman,
having spent at least six months afloat each year, and he
died on board his yacht in Weymouth Harbour on the 16th
of November 1902.
HENWOOD, WILLIAM JORY (1805–1875), English mining
geologist, was born at Perron Wharf, Cornwall, on the 16th of
January 1805. In 1822 he commenced work as a clerk in a mining
office, and soon took an active interest in the working of mines
and in the metalliferous deposits. In 1832 he was appointed to the
office of assay-master and supervisor of tin in the duchy of
Cornwall, a post from which he retired in 1838. Meanwhile he
had commenced in 1826 to communicate papers on mining subjects
to the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, and the
Geological Society of London, and in 1840 he was elected F.R.S.
In 1843 he went to take charge of the Gongo-Soco mines in Brazil;
afterwards he proceeded to India to report on certain metalliferous
deposits for the Indian government; and in 1858, impaired in
health, he retired and settled at Penzance. His most important
memoirs on the metalliferous deposits of Cornwall and Devon
were published in 1843 by the Royal Geological Society of
Cornwall. At a much later date he communicated with enlarged
