1852–1854 travelled in Peru and the forests of the eastern Andes. He visited South America again in 1860–1861, in order to arrange for the introduction of the cinchona plant into India, a service of the highest value to humanity. In 1865–1866 he visited Ceylon and India, to inspect and report upon the Tinnevelly pearl-fishery and the cinchona plantations. On the Abyssinian expedition of 1867–68 he served as geographer, and was present at the storming of Magdala. In 1874 he accompanied the Arctic expedition under Sir George Nares as far as Greenland. In later years Sir Clements Markham travelled extensively in western Asia and the United States. In 1855 he became a clerk in the Board of Control. From 1867–1877 he was in charge of the geographical department of the Indian Office. He was secretary to the Hakluyt Society from 1858–1887, and became its president in 1890. From 1863–1888 he acted as secretary to the Royal Geographical Society, and on his retirement received the society’s gold medal for his distinguished services to geography. He was elected president of the same society in 1893, and retained office for the unprecedented period of twelve years, taking an active share in the work of the society and in increasing its usefulness in various directions. It was almost entirely due to his exertions that funds were obtained for the National Antarctic Expedition under Captain Robert Scott, which left England in the summer of 1901. Sir Clements Markham was elected F.R.S. in 1873; was created C.B. in 1871, and K.C.B. in 1896; became an honorary member of the principal geographical societies; and was president of the International Geographical Congress which met in London in 1895.
Sir Clements Markham conducted the Geographical Magazine from 1872–1878, when it became merged in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. Among his other publications may be mentioned the following: Franklin’s Footsteps (1852); Cuzco and Lima (1856); Travels in Peru and India (1862); A Quichua Grammar and Dictionary (1863); Spanish Irrigation (1867); A History of the Abyssinian Expedition (1869); A Life of the Great Lord Fairfax (1870); Ollanta, a Quichua Drama (1871); Memoir on the Indian Surveys (1871; 2nd ed., 1878); General Sketch of the History of Persia (1873); The Threshold of the Unknown Region (1874, 4 editions); A Memoir of the Countess of Chinchon, (1875); Missions to Thibet, (1877; 2nd ed., 1879); Memoir of the Indian Surveys; Peruvian Bark (1880); Peru (1880); The War between Chili and Peru (1879–81; 3rd ed., 1883); The Sea Fathers (1885); The Fighting Veres (1888); Paladins of King Edwin (1896); Life of John Davis the Navigator (1889); a Life of Richard III. (1906), in which he maintained that the king was not guilty of the murder of the two princes in the Tower; also lives of Admiral Fairfax, Admiral John Markham, Columbus and Major Rennel; A History of Peru; editions with introductions of twenty works for the Hakluyt Society, of which fourteen were also translations; about seventy papers in the Royal Geographical Society’s Journal; the Reports on the Moral and Material Progress of India for 1871–1872 and 1872–1873; Memoir of Sir John Harington for the Roxburghe Club (1880); the Peruvian chapters for J. Winsor’s History of America, and the chapters on discovery and surveying for Clowes’s History of the Navy.
MARKHAM, GERVASE (or Jervis) (1568?–1637), English
poet and miscellaneous writer, third son of Sir Robert Markham
of Cotham, Nottinghamshire, was born probably in 1568. He
was a soldier of fortune in the Low Countries, and later was a
captain under the earl of Essex’s command in Ireland. He was
acquainted with Latin and several modern languages, and had
an exhaustive practical acquaintance with the arts of forestry
and agriculture. He was a noted horse-breeder, and is said
to have imported the first Arab. Very little is known of the
events of his life. The story of the murderous quarrel between
Gervase Markham and Sir John Holles related in the Biographia
Britannica (s.v. Holles) has been generally connected with him,
but in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Clements R.
Markham, a descendant from the same family, refers it to another
contemporary of the same name, whose monument is still to be
seen in Laneham church. Gervase Markham was buried at
St Giles’s, Cripplegate, London, on the 3rd of February 1637.
He was a voluminous writer on many subjects, but he repeated
himself considerably in his works, sometimes reprinting the same
books under other titles. His booksellers procured a declaration
from him in 1617 that he would produce no more on certain topics.
Markham’s writings include: The Teares of the Beloved (1600) and Marie Magdalene’s Teares (1601) long and rather commonplace poems on the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, both reprinted by Dr A. B. Grosart in the Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library (1871); The most Honorable Tragedy of Sir Richard Grinvile (1595), reprinted (1871) by Professor E. Arber, a prolix and euphuistic poem in eight-lined stanzas which was no doubt in Tennyson’s mind when he wrote his stirring ballad; The Poem of Poems, or Syon’s Muse (1595), dedicated to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Sidney; Devoreux, Vertues Teares (1597). Herod and Antipater, a Tragedy (1622) was written in conjunction with William Sampson, and with Henry Machin he wrote a comedy called The Dumbe Knight (1608). A Discourse of Horsemanshippe (1593) was followed by other popular treatises on horsemanship and farriery. Honour in his Perfection (1624) is in praise of the earls of Oxford, Southampton and Essex, and the Souldier’s Accidence (1625) turns his military experiences to account. He edited Juliana Berners’s Boke of Saint Albans under the title of The Gentleman’s Academie (1595), and produced numerous books on husbandry, many of which are catalogued in Lowndes’s Bibliographer’s Manual (Bohn’s ed., 1857–1864).
MARKHAM, MRS, the pseudonym of Elizabeth Penrose
(1780–1837), English writer, daughter of Edmund Cartwright,
the inventor of the power-loom. She was born at her father’s
rectory at Goadby Marwood, Leicestershire, on the 3rd of August
1780. In 1804 she married the Rev. John Penrose, a country
clergyman in Lincolnshire and a voluminous theological writer.
During her girlhood Mrs Penrose had frequently stayed with
relatives at Markham, a village in Nottinghamshire, and from
this place she took the nom de plume of “Mrs Markham,” under
which she gained celebrity as a writer of history and other books
for the young. The best known of her books was A History of
England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the End of the
Reign of George III. (1823), which went through numerous
editions. In 1828 she published a History of France. Both
these works enjoyed a wide popularity in America as well as in
England. The distinctive characteristic of “Mrs Markham’s”
histories was the elimination of all the “horrors” of history,
and of the complications of modern party politics, as being unsuitable
for the youthful mind; and the addition to each chapter
of “Conversations” between a fictitious group consisting of
teacher and pupils bearing upon the subject matter. Her less
well-known works were Amusements of Westernheath, or Moral
Stories for Children (2 vols., 1824); A Visit to the Zoological
Gardens (1829); two volumes of stories entitled The New Children’s
Friend (1832); Historical Conversations for Young People
(1836); Sermons for Children (1837). Mrs Markham died at
Lincoln on the 24th of January 1837.
See Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and his Friends (2 vols., London, 1891); G. C. Boase and W. P. Courtney, Bibliotheca Cornubiensis (3 vols., London, 1874–1882).
MARKHAM, WILLIAM (1719–1807), archbishop of York, was
educated at Westminster and at Christ Church, Oxford. He
was one of the best scholars of his day, and attained to the headship
of his old school and college in 1753 and 1767 respectively.
He held from time to time a number of livings, and in 1771 was
made bishop of Chester and tutor to George prince of Wales.
In 1777 he became archbishop of York, and also lord high
almoner and privy councillor. He was for some time a close
friend of Edmund Burke, but his strong championship of Warren
Hastings caused a breach. He was accused by Lord Chatham of
preaching pernicious doctrines, and was a victim of the Gordon
riots in 1780. He died in 1807.
MARKHOR (“snake-eater”), the Pushtu name of a large
Himalayan wild goat (Capra falconeri), characterized by its
spirally twisted horns, and long shaggy winter coat. From the
Pir-Panjal range of Kashmir the markhor extends westwards
into Baltistan, Astor, Hunza, Afghanistan and the trans-Indus
ranges of the Punjab. The twist of the horns varies to a great
extent locally, the spiral being most open and corkscrew-like
in the typical Astor animal, and closest and most screw-like
in the race (C. falconeri jerdoni) inhabiting the Suleiman and
adjacent ranges.
MARKIRCH (French, Ste-Marie-aux-Mines), a town of
Germany, in Upper Alsace, prettily situated in the valley of
the Leber, an affluent of the Rhine, near the French frontier.
Pop. (1900), 12,372. The once productive silver, copper and lead
