In 1778 he became a student of the Royal Academy, of which he I was elected associate in 1792 and full academician in 1794. In 1812 he was appointed librarian, having served as assistant for two years. He died in London on the 27th of April 1834.
Among his earliest book illustrations are plates engraved for Ossian and for Bell's Poets; and in 1780 he became a regular contributor to the Novelist's Magazine, for which he executed one hundred and forty-eight designs, including his eleven admirable illustrations to Peregrine Pickle and his graceful subjects from Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison. He contentedly designed plates for pocket-books, tickets for concerts, illustrations to almanacs, portraits of popular players—and into even the slightest and most trivial sketches he infused a grace and distinction which render them of value to the collectors of the present time. Among his more important series are the two sets of illustrations to Robinson Crusoe, one for the New Magazine and one for Stockdale's edition, and the plates to The Pilgrim's Progress (1788), to Harding's edition of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1792), to The Rape of the Lock (1798), to the works of Gessner (1802), to Cowper's Poems (1825), and to The Decameron; while his figure-subjects in the superb editions of Roger's Italy (1830) and Poems (1834) prove that even in latest age his fancy was still unexhausted, and his hand hardly at all enfeebled. He is at his best in subjects of a domestic or a gracefully ideal sort; the heroic and the tragic were beyond his powers. The designs by Stothard were estimated by R. N. Wornum to number five thousand, and of these about three thousand have been engraved. His oil pictures are usually small in size, and rather sketchy in handling. Their colouring is often rich and glowing, being founded upon the practice of Rubens, of whom Stothard was a great admirer. The " Vintage," perhaps his most important oil painting, is in the National Gallery. He was a contributor to Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, but his best-known painting is the " Procession of the Canterbury Pilgrims," also in the National Gallery, the engraving from which, begun by Luigi and continued by Niccolo Schiavonetti and finished by James Heath, attained an immense popularity. The commission for this picture was given to Stothard by R. H. Cromek, and was the cause of a quarrel with his friend William Blake. It was followed by a companion work, the " Flitch of Bacon," which was drawn in sepia for the engraver but was never carried out in colour.
In addition to his easel pictures, Stothard adorned the grand staircase of Burghley House, near Stamford, with subjects of War, Intemperance, and the Descent of Orpheus in Hell (1799- 1803); the mansion of Hafod, North Wales, with a series of scenes from Froissart and Monstrelet (1810); the cupola of the upper hall of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh (now occupied by the Signet Library), with Apollo and the Muses, and figures of poets, orators, &c. (1822); and he prepared designs for a frieze and other decorations for Buckingham Palace, which were not executed, owing to the death of George IV. He also designed the magnificent shield presented to the duke of Wellington by the merchants of London, and executed with his own hand a series of eight etchings from the various subjects which adorned it. In the British Museum is a collection, in four volumes, of engravings of Stothard's works, made by Robert Balmanno.
An interesting but most indiscriminately eulogistic biography of Stothard, by his daughter-in-law, Mrs Bray, was published in 1851. A. C. Coxheadn's Thomas Stothard, R.A., an Illustrated Monograph (1906), contains a short biographical chapter, and an accurately dated summary of the various books and periodicals illustrated by Stothard ; see also Austin Dobson, Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 1st series (1892).
STOUGHTON, JOHN (1807–1897), English Nonconformist
divine, was born at Norwich on the 18th of November 1807.
His father was an Episcopalian, his mother a member of the
Society of Friends. Stoughton was educated at Norwich
Grammar School, and, after an interval of legal study, at Highbury Congregational College. In 1833 he became minister at
Windsor, in 1843 at Kensington; in 1856 he was elected chairman of the Congregational Union. From 1872 to 1884 he was
professor of historical theology in New College, Hampstead.
He died at Ealing on the 24th of October 1897. Stoughton was
no controversialist, but did a good deal of sound historical
work which was published in Church and State 1660-1663
(London, 1862); Ecclesiastical History of England 1640-1660
(4 vols., London, 1867–1870); Religion in England under Queen
Anne and the Georges (2 vols., 1878); Religion in England from
1800 to 1880 (2 vols., 1884). He contributed an account of
Nonconformist modes of celebrating the Lord's Supper to the
ritual commission of 1870, arranged a conference on co-operation
between Anglicans and dissenters (presided over by Archbishop
Tait) in 1876, was one of Dean Stanley's lecturers in Westminster
Abbey and a pall-bearer at his funeral. He was elected to the
Athenaeum Club in 1874 on the nomination of Matthew Arnold.
Besides the books already mentioned he wrote a number of more popular works, among which Homes and Haunts of Luther (1875), The Italian Reformers (1881), and The Spanish Reformers (1883) are conspicuous. His Recollections of a Long Life (1894) furnish interesting autobiographical material.
STOUR, the name of several English rivers. (1) The East-Anglian
Stour rises in the slight chalk hills in the south-east of
Cambridgeshire and follows a course ranging from east to south-east
to the North Sea at Harwich, passing Clare, Sudbury, Nayland
and Manningtree. It falls about 380 ft. in a course of 60 m.,
and drains an area of 407 sq. m. Over nearly its entire course it
forms the boundary between Suffolk and Essex. From Manningtree
downward its course is estuarine, and it is joined immediately
above Harwich by the estuary of the Orwell. It is navigable
up to Sudbury but does not bear much traffic. (2) The Kentish
Stour or Great Stour rises on the southern face of the North
Downs, the branch called the East Stour having its source not
far inland from Hythe, but flowing at first away from the sea,
while the main or western branch rises near Lenham. They
unite at Ashford. Passing Canterbury, the Stour divides
into two branches, the larger reaching the English Channel
in Pegwell Bay, while the smaller runs north to the North
Sea at Reculver. The larger branch is joined in the levels
by the Little Stour from the south. The Stour is navigable
to Fordwich near Canterbury, but is little used above Sand-
wich. Its length is about 40 m., its fall from Ashford 150 ft.,
and its drainage area 370 sq. m. The name of Stour belongs
also to (3) a considerable but unnavigable tributary of the
Hampshire Avon, rising in Wiltshire, and touching Somersetshire
and Dorsetshire before it joins the main river in Hampshire
close to its mouth; (4) a left bank tributary of the Severn,
which it joins at Stourport, its course being followed by the
Worcestershire and Staffordshire canal; and (5) a small
tributary of the upper Avon, rising in the north of Oxfordshire
in the hills west of Banbury, and joining the main river a little
below Stratford-on-Avon.
STOURBRIDGE, a market town in the Droitwich parliamentary division of Worcestershire, England, 144 m. N.W. by W. of London and 10 W. of Birmingham by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 16,302. A branch canal connects with the Worcestershire and Staffordshire system. The town stands on an eminence on the left bank of the Stour. Among public buildings are a town-hall (1887) and town offices, and a school of science and art. There is an endowed grammar school founded by Edward VI., and a bluecoat or hospital school. Dr Johnson received part of his education in this town (1726–1727). The principal manufactures are in iron, leather and skins; there are glue works and fire-brick works. Coal and fire-clay are raised. The manufacture of glass was established in 1556 by emigrants from Hungary, the place where they erected their factory being still known as Hungary Hill. Annual fairs are held. The town was originally called Bedcote, a
name retained by the manor. The urban district includes the
townships of Upper Swinford and Wollaston.
STOURPORT, a market town in trie Bewdley parliamentary
division of Worcestershire, England, 145 m. N. by W. of Worcester by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district
