A poem sacred to the memory of the Honorable Josiah Willard, Esq; late secretary of the province of the Massachusetts-Bay, in New-England; who deceased December 6th, 1756. Aetatis 76.
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The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration...)
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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British Library
W028908
Half-title: A poem on the death of Secretary Willard. Attributed to Oliver in the Dictionary of American biography.
Boston : Printed by Green and Russell, in Queen-Street, M.DCC.LVII. 1757. 16p. ; 4°
The Scripture Lexicon; Or a Dictionary of Above Four Thousand Proper Names of Persons and Places, Mentioned in the Bible: Divided Into Syllables with ... ... the Second Edition, with Additions
(The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration a...)
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
The Age of Enlightenment profoundly enriched religious and philosophical understanding and continues to influence present-day thinking. Works collected here include masterpieces by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as religious sermons and moral debates on the issues of the day, such as the slave trade. The Age of Reason saw conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism transformed into one between faith and logic -- a debate that continues in the twenty-first century.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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British Library
T130707
Anonymous. By Peter Oliver. With a final errata leaf.
Birmingham: printed by M. Swinney; for J. Johnson; G. G. J. & J. Robinson; and S. Hayes, London, 1787. viii,337, 3p.; 8°
Peter Oliver was Chief Justice of the Superior Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He was a Loyalist during the American Revolution, and left Massachusetts in 1776.
Background
Peter Oliver was born on March 26, 1713, in Boston, Massachussets, the son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Belcher) Oliver and the brother of Lieutenant-Governor Andrew Oliver. The family was descended from Thomas Oliver who came to Massachusetts from England in 1632 and at the time of the Revolution its members occupied distinguished social and political positions.
Education
Peter graduated in 1730 from Harvard where he had ranked high in scholarship but had been disciplined for stealing a turkey and a goose.
Career
Peter Oliver lived in Boston until 1774 when he bought land and settled at Middleboro', Plymouth County, about thirty miles from the capital. He established iron works there and built one of the finest residences in New England, called "Oliver Hall, " celebrated for its size and elegance and the beauty of its grounds. He lived there until his exile; later, about 1782, the place was burned by the Americans. On Dec. 12, 1747, Oliver was appointed judge of the inferior court of common pleas of Plymouth County and served for nine years. He was then made judge of the superior court, Sept. 14, 1756, and in 1771 became chief justice. The most famous case in which he sat, as an associate justice, was the trial of the British soldiers in 1770.
"A Loyalist by birth, education and instinct, a man of courage, firmness, learning and character, " he became a marked man as the troubles with England came to a crisis. The judges of the superior court received niggardly pay from the General Court. The British government determined to augment the salaries by annual grants, which immediately inflamed patriotic sentiment in the colony. In view of the threatening attitude of the people, four of the judges, after having decided to accept the grants, recanted, but Chief Justice Oliver held firm. He claimed that he had expended about 2, 000 as justice since his appointment and offered to settle the question by resigning if the General Court would reimburse him to the extent of one-half his expenditures. The only answer was a categorical inquiry as to whether or not he would accept the Crown grant and he replied affirmatively. The legislature then proceeded to draw up articles of impeachment but Governor Hutchinson, whose daughter had married Oliver's son, refused to countenance the impeachment proceedings. Matters came to a head at Worcester, April 19, 1774, when the grand jury in writing refused to serve under him. The grand jurors of Suffolk County similarly refused to serve under him in August. Oliver had already been a member of the Council and in 1774 was appointed one of the "Mandamus Councillors. " On October 14, 1775, he was one of the signers of the Address to General Gage, and, with his niece, was among those who left for Halifax with the British forces when they evacuated Boston in March 1776.
Oliver continued to England where he was hospitably received by the King and was given the degree of D. C. L. by Oxford University. He resided at Birmingham until his death, the government having granted him a pension. At his death he left a manuscript entitled "The Origin and Progress of the American War to 1776" the interest of which is mainly personal as the bias is so strong as to invalidate the value of the account as history. He was greatly interested in history and wrote both in verse and prose, among the items printed being A Speech . After the Death of Isaac Lothrop (Boston, 1750); A Poem Sacred to the Memory of the Honorable Josiah Willard (1757), and The Scripture Lexicon (1787), which was used as a text at Oxford and several times reprinted.
Achievements
Peter Oliver served as Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature (1752–1769) and Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature (1769–1775).
Peter Oliver wrote: The Origin and Progress of the American War to 1776; A Speech . After the Death of Isaac Lothrop (1750); A Poem Sacred to the Memory of the Honorable Josiah Willard (1757); and The Scripture Lexicon (1787).