Scotland under Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and was one of the two peers who alone opposed the bill for abolishing the pope’s jurisdiction under Elizabeth. His son George, who succeeded, was the earl to whom the custody of Mary Stuart was committed, his task being rendered all the more difficult for him by the intrigues of his second wife, Bess of Hardwick, the builder of Chatsworth, who had married three husbands before her union with him. Two sons of this last earl succeeded one another, and the title then devolved, for want of male issue, on the lineal descendants of Sir Gilbert Talbot of Grafton in Worcestershire, third son of John, the 2nd earl. But the old baronies of Talbot, Strange of Blackmere, and Furnival had passed away in 1616 to the daughters of the 7th earl, of whom the youngest married Thomas (Howard) earl of Arundel, whose descendant, the duke of Norfolk, has the valuable Furnival estates. The above Sir Gilbert had fought for Henry VII. at Bosworth, where he was severely wounded, was knighted on the field, and was throughout one of the first Tudor’s most trusted councillors. He fought also at Stoke against the insurgents with Lambert Simnel, was made a knight banneret, governor of Calais, and lord chamberlain.
The 9th earl, George, descended from this Gilbert, died unmarried, and his nephew, who followed, was succeeded by his grandson Francis, chiefly memorable for his unhappy fate. His second wife, the “wanton Shrewsbury” of Pope, a daughter of the earl of Cardigan, was seduced by the duke of Buckingham, whom the outraged husband challenged to a duel. The countess, it is said, was present at the scene, and held Buckingham’s horse in the disguise of a page, saw her husband killed, and then clasped her lover in her arms, receiving blood-stains upon her dress from the embrace. Charles, the 12th earl, son of this unfortunate nobleman, was raised by William III. to the dignity of a duke, but as he left no son this title died along with him in 1718, and the earldom of Shrewsbury devolved on his cousin Gilbert, a Roman Catholic priest.
From this time the direct line of Sir Gilbert Talbot of Grafton began to fail. A nephew three times succeeded to an uncle, and then the title devolved upon a cousin, who died unmarried in 1856. On the death of this cousin the descent of the title was for a short time in dispute, and the lands were claimed for Lord Edmund Howard (now Talbot), an infant son of the duke of Norfolk, under the will of the last earl; but the courts decided that, under a private act obtained by the duke of Shrewsbury shortly before his death, the title and bulk of the estates must go together, and the true successor to the earldom was found in Earl Talbot, the head of another line of the descendants of Sir Gilbert Talbot of Grafton, sprung from a second marriage of Sir Gilbert’s son, Sir John Talbot of Albrighton. The head of this family in the beginning of the 18th century was a divine of some mark, William Talbot, who died bishop of Durham in 1730. His son Charles, who filled the office of lord chancellor, was created Baron Talbot of Hensol in Glamorganshire in 1733; and. his son William was advanced to the dignity of Earl Talbot in 1761, to which was added Ingestre, the barony of Dynevor, with special remainder to his daughter, Lady Cecil Rice, in 1780. Then succeeded a nephew, who was created Viscount and Earl Talbot, and assumed by royal licence the surname of Chetwynd before Talbot, from his mother.
All the titles just mentioned have been united in the line of the Earl Talbot who successfully claimed the Shrewsbury title as the 18th earl, the earldom of Shrewsbury (1442) being now the oldest existing that is not merged in a higher title. The family seats (Alton Towers and Ingestre Hall) and the chief estates are in Staffordshire. The old badge of the family was a “talbot” or running hound. (J. Ga.; J. H. R.)
TALBOT, MARY ANNE (1778–1808), the “British Amazon,” was born in London on the 2nd of February 1778. She believed herself to be the illegitimate child of the 1st Earl Talbot. Early in her career she eloped, in the disguise of a boy, with a captain. In 1792 she was a drummer in Flanders. In the capture of Valenciennes her lover was killed; and Mary Anne deserted and became cabin boy on a French lugger, which she asserted was captured by the British, who transferred her to the “Brunswick,” where she served as a powder monkey, being wounded
in Lord Howe’s victory of the 1st of June 1794. For this she
later received a small pension. When the wound healed she
again went to sea, was captured by the French, and imprisoned
for a year and a half. Her sex was not discovered until shortly
afterwards she was seized by a press gang. She finally became
a household servant to Robert Kirby, a London publisher, who
included an account of her adventures in his Wonderful Museum
(1804) and in Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Anne
Talbot (1809). She died on the 4th of February 1808.
TALBOT, WILLIAM HENRY FOX (1800–1877), English discoverer in photography, was the only child of William Davenport Talbot, of Lacock Abbey, Wilts, and of Lady Elizabeth Fox Strangways, daughter of the 2nd earl of Ilchester. He was born on the 11th of February 1800, and was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained
the Porson prize in 1820, and graduated as twelfth wrangler in
1821. From 1822 to 1872 he frequently communicated papers to the Royal Society, many of them on mathematical subjects. At an early period he had begun his optical researches, which were to have such important results in connexion with photography. To the Edinburgh Journal of Science in 1826 he contributed a paper on “Some Experiments on Coloured Flame”; to the Quarterly Journal of Science in 1827 a paper on "Monochromatic Light"; and to the Philosophical Magazine a number of papers on chemical subjects, including one on “Chemical Changes of Colour.” Before L. J. M. Daguerre exhibited in 1839 pictures taken by the sun, Talbot had obtained similar success, and as soon as Daguerre’s discoveries became known communicated the results of his experiments to the Royal Society. In 1841 he made known his discovery of the calotype or talbotype process, and after the discovery of the collodion process by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851 he devised a method
of instantaneous photography. For his discoveries, which are detailed in his Pencil of Nature (1844), he received in 1842 the Rumford medal of the Royal Society. While engaged in his scientific researches he devoted much time to archaeology. He published Hermes, or Classical and Antiquarian Researches (1838–39), and Illustrations of the Antiquity of the Book of Genesis (1839). With Sir Henry Rawlinson and Dr Edward Hincks he shares the honour of having been one of the first decipherers of the cuneiform inscriptions of Nineveh. He was also the author of English Etymologies (1846). He died at
Lacock Abbey on the 17th of September 1877.
TALBOT OF HENSOL, CHARLES TALBOT, 1st Baron (1685–1737)) lord chancellor of England, was the eldest son of William Talbot, bishop of Durham, a descendant of the 1st earl of Shrewsbury. He was educated at Eton and Oriel College, Oxford, and became a fellow of All Souls College in 1704. He was called to the bar in 1711, and in 1717 was appointed solicitor-general to the prince of Wales. Having been elected a member of the House of Commons in 1720, he became solicitor-general in 1726, and in 1733 he was made lord chancellor and raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Talbot of Hensol. Talbot proved himself an equity judge of exceptional capacity and of the highest character during the three years of his occupancy of the Woolsack. He died on the 14th of February 1737. Among his contemporaries Talbot enjoyed the reputation of a wit; he was a patron of the poet Thomson, who in The Seasons commemorated a son of his to whom he acted as tutor; and Butler dedicated his famous Analogy to the lord chancellor. The title assumed by Talbot was derived from Hensol in Glamorganshire, which came to him through his wife.
See Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal (8 vols. London, 1845–69); Edward Foss, The Judges of England (9 vols. London, 1848–64); Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George II. ( 2 vols. London, 1848); G. E. C., Complete Peerage, vol. vii. (London, 1896).
TALC, a mineral which in its compact forms is known as steatite, or soapstone. It was probably the μαγνήτις λίθος of Theophrastus, described as a stone of silvery lustre, easily
