HUGHES, SIR EDWARD (c. 1720–1794), British admiral, entered the Royal Navy in 1735, and four years later was present at Porto Bello. In 1740 he became lieutenant, and in that rank served in the Cartagena expedition of 1741, and at the indecisive battle of Toulon (1744). In H.M.S. “Warwick” he was present at the action with the “Glorioso,” but in default of proper support from the “Lark” (which was sailing in company with the “Warwick”), the combat ended with the enemy’s escape. The commander of the “Lark” was subsequently tried and condemned for his conduct, and Hughes received the vacant command. Captain Hughes was with Boscawen at Louisburg and with Saunders at Quebec. He was in continual employment during the peace, and as Commodore commanded in the East Indies from 1773 to 1777. It was not long before he returned to the East as a rear-admiral, with an overwhelming naval force. On his outward voyage he retook Goree from the French, and he was called upon to conduct only minor operations for the next two years, as the enemy could not muster any force fit to meet the powerful squadron Hughes had brought from the Channel. In 1782 he stormed Trincomalee a few days before the squadron of Suffren arrived in the neighbourhood. For the next year these Indian waters were the scene of one of the most famous of naval campaigns. Suffren (q.v.) was perhaps the ablest sea-commander that France ever produced, but his subordinates were factious and unskilful; Hughes on the other hand, whose ability was that born of long experience rather than genius, was well supported. No fewer than five fiercely contested general actions were fought by two fleets, neither of them gaining a decisive advantage. In the end Hughes held his ground. After the peace he returned to England, and, though further promotions came to him, he never again hoisted his flag. He had accumulated considerable wealth during his Indian service, which for the most part he spent in unostentatious charity. He died at his seat of Luxborough in Essex in 1794.
HUGHES, HUGH PRICE (1847–1902), British Nonconformist
divine, was born at Carmarthen on the 8th of February 1847,
the son of a surgeon. He began to preach when he was fourteen,
and in 1865 entered Richmond College to study for the Wesleyan
Methodist ministry under the Rev. Alfred Barrett, one of whose
daughters he married in 1873. He graduated at London
University in 1869, the last year of his residence. He established
in 1887 the West London Mission, holding popular services on
Sunday in St James’s Hall, Piccadilly, when he preached from
time to time on the housing of the poor, sweating, gambling
and other subjects of social interest. In connexion with this
mission he founded a sisterhood to forward the social side of the
work, which was presided over by Mrs Hughes. He had started
in 1885 the Methodist Times, and rapidly made it a leading organ
of Nonconformist opinion. He was a born fighter, and carried
the fire and eloquence he showed on the platform and in the
pulpit into journalism. He supported Mr W. T. Stead in 1885,
as he had earlier supported Mrs Josephine Butler in a similar
cause; he attacked the trade in alcohol; was an anti-vivisectionist;
he advocated arbitration; and his vehement attacks
on Sir Charles Dilke and Charles Stewart Parnell originated the
phrase the “Nonconformist conscience.” He differed strongly,
however, from a large section of Nonconformist opinion in his
defence of the South African War. He was long regarded with
some distrust by the more conservative section of his own church,
but in 1898 he was made president of the Wesleyan Conference
He raised large sums for church work, amounting it is said to
over a quarter of a million of money. His energies were largely
devoted to co-operation among the various Nonconformist
bodies, and he was one of the founders and most energetic
members of the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches.
He had long been in failing health when he died suddenly in
London on the 17th of November 1902.
See his Life (1904) by his daughter, Dorothea Price Hughes.
HUGHES, JOHN (1677–1720), English poet and miscellaneous
writer, was born at Marlborough, Wiltshire, on the 29th of
January 1677. His father was a clerk in a city office, and his
grandfather was ejected from the living of Marlborough in 1662
for his Nonconformist opinions. Hughes was educated at a
dissenting academy in London, where Isaac Watts was among
his fellow scholars. He became a clerk in the Ordnance Office,
and served on several commissions for the purchase of land for
the royal dockyards. In 1717 Lord Chancellor Cowper made him
secretary to the commissions of the peace in the court of chancery.
He died on the night of the production of his most celebrated
work, The Siege of Damascus, the 17th of February 1720.
His poems include occasional pieces in honour of William III., imitations of Horace, and a translation of the tenth book of the Pharsalia of Lucan. He was an amateur of the violin, and played in the concerts of Thomas Britton, the “musical small-coal man.” He wrote some of the libretti of the cantatas (2 vols., 1712) set to music by Dr John Christopher Pepusch. To these he prefixed an essay advocating the claims of English libretti, and insisting on the value of recitative. Others of his pieces were set to music by Ernest Galliard and by Händel. In the masque of Apollo and Daphne (1716) he was associated with Pepusch, and in his opera of Calypso and Telemachus (1712) with John E. Galliard. He was a contributor to the Tatler, the Spectator and the Guardian, and he collaborated with Sir Richard Blackmore in a series of essays entitled The Lay Monastery (1713–1714). He persuaded Joseph Addison to stage Cato. Addison had requested Hughes to write the last act, but eventually completed the play himself. He wrote a version of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise ... (1714) chiefly from the French translation printed at the Hague in 1693, which went through several editions, and is notable as the basis of Pope’s “Eloisa to Abelard” (1717). He also made translations from Molière, Fontenelle and the Abbé Vertot, and in 1715 edited The Works of Edmund Spenser ... (another edition, 1750). His last work, the tragedy of The Siege of Damascus, is his best. It remained on the list of acting plays for a long time, and is to be found in various collected editions of British drama.
His Poems on Several Occasions, with some Select Essays in Prose ... were edited with a memoir in 1735, by William Duncombe, who had married his sister Elizabeth. See also Letters by several eminent persons (2 vols., 1772) and The Correspondence of John Hughes, Esq. ... and Several of his Friends ... (2 vols., 1773), with some additional poems. There is a long and eulogistic account of Hughes, with some letters, in the Biographia Britannica.
HUGHES, JOHN (1797–1864), American Roman Catholic
divine, was born in Annaloghan, Co. Tyrone, Ireland, on the
24th of June 1797. In 1817 he followed his father to Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania. He was ordained deacon in 1825 and
priest in 1826; and as vicar in St Augustine’s and other churches
in Philadelphia he took a prominent part in the defence of
ecclesiastical authority against the lay trustee system. In
1837 he was consecrated coadjutor to Bishop Dubois in New
York. In the New York diocese, of which he was made administrator
in 1839 and bishop in 1842, besides suppressing (1841)
church control by lay trustees, he proved himself an active,
almost pugnacious, leader. His unsuccessful attempt to build
in Lafargeville, Jefferson county, a seminary of St Vincent de
Paul, was followed by the transfer of the school to Fordham,
where St John’s College (now Fordham University) was established
(1841), largely out of funds collected by him in Europe
in 1839–1840. His demand for state support for parochial
schools was favoured by Governor Seward and was half victorious:
it was in this controversy that he was first accused of forming
a Catholic party in politics. John McCloskey was consecrated
his coadjutor in 1844; in 1847 the diocese of New York was
divided; and in 1850 Hughes was named the first archbishop of
New York, with suffragan bishops of Boston, Hartford, Albany
and Buffalo. In the meantime, during the “Native American”
disturbances of 1844, he had been viciously attacked together
with his Church; he kept his parishioners in check, but bade
them protect their places of worship. His attitude was much
the same at the time of the Anti-Popery outcry of the “Know-Nothings”
in 1854. His early anti-slavery views had been made
much less radical by his travels in the South and in the West
Indies, but at the outbreak of the Civil War he was strongly
