SLAUGHTER, EDWARD (1655–1729), hebraist, born in Herefordshire in 1655, entered the Society of Jesus on 7 Sept. 1673, and was ordained priest on 28 March 1682, in which year he was sent to the mission of Swaffham, Norfolk. He was appointed to teach Hebrew in the college of the English jesuits at Liège about 1677; he subsequently taught mathematics there, and eventually became professor of theology. He was professed of the four vows on 2 Feb. 1690-1, and was declared rector of the college at Liège in 1701. When John Churchill, earl (and subsequently duke) of Marlborough,took the citadel and city of Liège in 1702, he paid the rector a visit, and showed him special courtesy. Slaughter afterwards became rector of the jesuit colleges at St. Omer and Ghent. He passed the last seven years of his life, sine officio, at Liège, where he died

on 20 Jan. 1728-9.

His works are: 1. Conclusiones ex universa theologia propugnanda in Collegio Anglicano Societatis Jesu Leodii,' Liège, 1696, 4to. 2. Grammatica Hebraica brevi et nova methodo concinnata, qua cito, facile, solide, linguæ sanctæ rudimenta addisci possunt,' Amsterdam, 1699, 12mo; Rome, 1705, 1760, 1823, 1834, 1851, 1861, 8vo; Paris, 1857 and 1866 (revised and corrected by J. J. L. Bargès, professor of Hebrew at the Sorbonne).

[Foley's Records, v. 595, vii. 715; De Backer's Bibl. des Ecrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1876, iii. 830; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 192; Paquot's Hist. Littéraire des Pays-Bas, 1765, iii. 291.]

T. C.

SLAUGHTER, STEPHEN (d. 1765), portrait-painter, was a native of Ireland, and worked there for a time, subsequently coming to London, where he took a good position in the profession. He succeeded the younger Walton as keeper and surveyor of the king's pictures, and held that post until his death, which took place at Kensington on 15 May 1765. Slaughter's works are fairly well painted, with a good deal of colour in the faces and heavy shadows. His portrait of Sir Hans Sloane (1736), formerly in the British Museum, is now in the National Portrait Gallery; those of the Hon. John

and Lady Georgiana Spencer (1737) are at Blenheim; and that of John Hoadly, archbishop of Armagh (1744), is in the National Gallery of Ireland, which also possesses his group of five members of the Hell-Fire Club. Of Slaughter's portraits of Nathaniel Kane, lord mayor of Dublin in 1734, and General Richard St. George, mezzotints by J. Brooks and M. Ford were published in Dublin. Slaughter executed in chiaroscuro in 1733 an imitation of a pen drawing by Parmigiano, then in the possession of Dr. Hickman.

[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting (Dallaway and Wornum); Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Cat. of National Gallery of Ireland.] F. M. O'D.

SLEATH, JOHN (1767-1847), high master of St. Paul's school, son of William and Millicent Sleath, was born probably at Osgathorpe, Leicestershire, where he was baptised tered Rugby school in 1776, his parents being on 19 June 1767 (Parish Register). He enthen described as of Leighton, near Kimbolton, Bedfordshire. In 1784 he went up as a Rugby exhibitioner to Lincoln College, Oxford, but in 1785 was elected to a scholarship

at Wadham. He was Hody exhibitioner in

1786-7, and in 1787, before taking his degree, was appointed to an assistant-mastership at Savage Landor, who writes with affectionate Rugby. Among his pupils there was Walter remembrance of the elegant and generous Doctor John Sleath at Rugby' (Works, ed. 1876, iv. 400 n.) He graduated B.A. in 1789, M.A. in 1793, B.D. and D.D. in 1814. He

was elected F.S.A. 9 March 1815, and F.R.S.

23 March 1820.

On 16 June 1814 Sleath was appointed high master of St. Paul's, and held the office till 10 Oct. 1837. The honours gained at the universities by his pupils from the school were remarkable. Dr. Jowett, master of Balliol College, Oxford, was one of his scholars, and he could claim nine fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Sleath was made prebendary of Rugmere in St. Paul's Cathedral, 5 July 1822; chaplain in ordinary to the king in 1825; subdean of the Chapel Royal, St. James's, 28 June 1833; rector of Thornby, Northamptonshire, in 1841. He died 30 April 1817, and was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's. He was married, but left no family. A marble bust of him, by W. Behnes, was executed in 1841. His elder brother, W. Boult by Sleath, was headmaster of Repton school from 1800 to 1832.

[Registers of Osgathorpe Church, the Chapel Royal, St. James's, and the Royal Society; Gardiner's Registers of Wadham College, ii.

178; Rugby School Register, 1881, i. 46 n.; Gent. Mag. 1841 ii. 87; Le Neve's Fasti, ii. 435; Campbell and Abbott's Life of Jowett, i. 32, 39; private information.] J. H. L.

SLEEMAN, SIR WILLIAM HENRY (1788-1856), major-general and Indian administrator, born at Stratton, Cornwall, on 18 Aug. 1788, was the son of Philip Sleeman (d. 1798) of Pool Park, St. Judy, Cornwall, yeoman and supervisor of excise, and his wife, Mary Spry (d. 1818). In 1809 he was nominated to an infantry cadetship in the Bengal army, and, going to India in the same year, was gazetted ensign 24 Sept. 1810, and lieutenant 16 Dec. 1814. He served in the Nepal war (1814-1816), when his regiment, the 12th Bengal infantry, lost five British officers by jungle fever, and he himself suffered severely from this ailment. In 1802 he was appointed junior assistant to the governor-general's agent in the Ságar and Nerbudda territories; nor did he again revert to military duties, being henceforth employed in civil and political posts, retaining, however, in accordance with the regulations, his right to military promotion. He was gazetted captain 23 Sept. 1825, major 1 Feb. 1837, lieutenant-colonel 26 May 1843, colonel 5 Dec. 1853, and major-general 28 Nov. 1854.

Between 1825 and 1835 he served as magistrate and district officer in various parts of what are now the Central Provinces. On being posted to the Jabalpur district in 1828, he issued a proclamation forbidding any one to aid or abet in a suttee, but hardly twelve months later a Brahmin widow was burnt alive in his presence, and with his reluctant assent, given when it became evident that the woman would otherwise starve herself to death. In 1831 he was transferred to Sagar, where, two years later, he displayed commendable firmness during a time of scarcity, refusing, though urged to do so by the military authorities, to put any limit on the market price of grain. În 1827 he had introduced the cultivation of the Otaheite sugar-cane in India. But his most memorable achievement was an exposure of the practices of the thugs, an organised fraternity of professional murderers. In 1829, in addition to his district work he acted as assistant to the official charged with the special task of dealing with this crime; and in January 1835 he was appointed general superintendent of the operations for the suppression of thuggi. In February 1839, additional duties being assigned to his office, he became commissioner for the suppression of Thuggi and dacoity. During the next two years he was actively engaged in in

vestigating and repressing criminal organisations in Upper India. During 1826 and 1835 over fourteen hundred thugs were hanged or transported for life. One man confessed to having committed over seven hundred murders, and his revelations were the basis of Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug,'. 1839 (Introd. p. vi). Detection was only possible by means of approvers,' for whose protection from the vengeance of their associates a special gaol was established at Jabalpur. In 1841 Sleeman was offered the post of resident at Lucknow, but he refused to accept this lucrative appointment in order that it might be retained by an officer who, as he heard, had been impoverished through the failure of a bank.

In 1842 he was sent into Bundelkhand to inquire into the disturbances that had taken place there, and from 1843 to 1849 he was political resident in Gwalior. Three years after the defeat of the Gwalior troops by a British force at Maharajpur he was able to report that the measures initiated by Lord Ellenborough for the maintenance of British influence in Sindhia's territory had proved signally successful. The turbulent aristocracy had been brought under subjection, and the people, delivered from lawless violence, were able to pursue their avocations without fear of robbery or murder (General Letter, 6 March 1847). On the residency at Lucknow again becoming vacant, Lord Dalhousie offered it to Sleeman (16 Sept. 1848), who now accepted it. The reports he submitted during a three months' tour in 1849-50 largely influenced Lord Dalhousie in his resolve to annex the kingdom, though this measure was opposed to the advice of the resident, who believed that_reforms were possible under native rule [see RAMSAY, JAMES ANDREW BROUN, MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE]. In December 1851 an attempt was made to assassinate him. In 1854 he was compelled by ill-health to leave for the hills, but the change failed to restore him, and he was ordered home. He died on 10 Feb. 1856 on board the Monarch, off Ceylon, on his way to England. On the recommendation of Lord Dalhousie the civil cross of the Bath was conferred on him four days before his death.

He married, on 21 June 1829, Amélie Josephine, daughter of Count Blondin de Fontenne, a French nobleman, by whom he had a son, Henry Arthur, born 6 Jan. 1833, cornet 16th dragoons January 1851.

A portrait in oils of Sleeman, by Beechey, is in the possession of Mrs. L. Brooke. It hung on the walls of the residency, Lucknow, throughout the siege.

Sleeman wrote: 1. Ramaseeana, or a Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language used by the Thugs, &c., Calcutta, 1836 (cf. Edinburgh Review, January 1837, pp. 357-95). 2. History of the Gurka Mandala Rajas' (Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, vi. 621, 1837). 3. 'Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official,' London, 1844; reprinted London, 1893 (Constable's 'Oriental Series '). 4. 'An Account of Wolves nurturing Children in their Dens,' Plymouth, 1852. 5. 'A Journey through the Kingdom of Oudh in 1849-50,' London, 1858.

[Memoir prefixed to A Journey through Oudh, 1858 Memoir by Vincent A. Smith, prefixed to Rambles and Recollections, 1893; Calcutta Review, vol. xxxv.; Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug, 1839, Introd. passim; Gent. Mag. 1856, ii. 243; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub.; Britten and Boulger's English Botanists.] S. W.

SLEIGH, WILLIAM CAMPBELL (1818-1887), serjeant-at-law, eldest son of William Willcocks Sleigh, M.D., of Bull House, Buckinghamshire, and subsequently of Dublin, was born in Dublin in 1818. He matriculated from St. Mary Hall, Oxford, on 9 Feb. 1843, but took no degree. He was entered as a student of the Middle Temple on 18 Jan. 1843, and on 30 Jan. 1846 he was called to the bar. He went the home circuit, attended the central criminal court, and the London, Middlesex, and Kent sessions. On 2 Nov. 1868 he was created a serjeant-at-law, being the last person not a judge received into Serjeants Inn. Like his fellow-serjeants Parry, Ballantine, and Huddleston (afterwards Baron Huddleston), he enjoyed a lucrative practice at the Old Bailey, and took part in many leading criminal trials, being a most effective cross-examiner. In 1871 he accepted the first brief for the claimant Arthur Orton, alias Roger Tichborne, in his civil action. He was long retained as leading counsel to the Bank of England, Hardinge Giffard (now Lord Halsbury) being his junior. As a conservative he unsuccessfully contested Lambeth 5 May 1862, Huddersfield 20 March 1868, Frome 17 Nov. 1868, and Newark 1 April 1870. In 1877 he emigrated to Australia, and on 21 March of that year was called to the bar of Victoria; but his claim to precedence as a serjeant-at-law was not allowed. He continued to practise in Melbourne until 1886, when he returned to England. He died at Ventnor, Isle of Wight, on 23 Jan. 1887.

Among his publications were: 1. 'Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister,' 1850. 2. The Grand Jury System subversive of the

Moral Interests of Society,' 1852. 3. A Handy Book on Criminal Law, applicable chiefly to Commercial Transactions,' 1858. 4. Personal Wrongs and Legal Remedies,' 1860.

[Law Times, 12 Feb. 1887, p. 274; Robinson's Bench and Bar, 1889, pp. 112, 298; private information.] G. C. B.

SLEZER, JOHN (d. 1714), author of "Theatrum Scotia' and captain of artillery, was a native of Holland, and was during his early years attached in a military capacity to the house of Orange. He settled in Scotland in 1669, and, through his proficiency as a draughtsman, became acquainted with several of the nobility. At a later date (1708) he described himself as a foreigner who had been honoured by the patronage of Charles II and the Duke of York.' Through the influence of his patrons he was appointed a lieutenant of artillery, and was entrusted specially with the practical superintendence of the ordnance. But about 1678 he turned aside from his professional duties to make a book of the figures, and draughts, and frontispiece in Talyduce [taille-douce, the French term for copper-plate etching of all the King's Castles, Pallaces, towns, and other notable places in the kingdom belonging to private subjects.' He travelled through Scotland, and the design ultimately resulted in the publication of Slezer's Theatrum Scotiæ.' On 19 April 1678 John Slezer, Ingineir to His Maj., was admitted burgess, gratis,' by the corporation of Dundee, and he prepared two views of the town. About the same time Slezer, when passing by Glamis Castle, the seat of Patrick Lyon, first earl of Strathmore [q.v.], expressed to the owner a wish to sketch

it.

Lord Strathmore, as he states in his Book of Record,' received the suggestion with enthusiasm, and gave Slezer liberall money, because I was loath that he should doe it at his owne charge, and that I knew the cuts and ingravings would stand him money.' The progress of the Theatrum Scotia' was temporarily interrupted in 1680, when the master of the ordnance, John Drummond of Lundin, brother of the Earl of Perth, sent Slezer, by Charles II's directions, to Holland for the purpose of having new guns cast for Scotland, and also that he might bring experienced gunners or fireworkers' thither. Many interesting letters, written by Slezer to John Drummond while employed on this mission, between March and November 1681, are preserved at Blair-Drummond. In one of his letters Slezer expressed the hope that his claim on the treasury for his expenses had been paid; for I suspect,' he adds, 'my

wife will be as scairce of siller as myself.' His wife's name was Jean Straiton, and she was doubtless a native of Dundee.

Before November 1688 Slezer had been advanced to the rank of captain. He was then in command of the artillery train, and was ordered to proceed against the supporters of the Prince of Orange. In March 1689 he was appointed by the Scots parliament to draw together the canoniers and artillery;' but as he at first refused to take the oath of fidelity to the committee of estates, he was forbidden to return to Edinburgh Castle until he had done so. He must have complied with this condition, and his earlier connection with the house of Orange enabled him to procure a commission from William III as 'captain of the Artillery Company and surveyor of Magazines,' which was dated Kensington, 11 Jan. 1689-90. Slezer visited the court and renewed his acquaintance with the king (cf. a letter, dated March 1690, from William III to the Earl of Melville, secretary of state for Scotland).

William III, like his two predecessors, expressed admiration for the project of the 'Theatrum Scotia,' and Slezer now devoted himself to the completion of that work. The first volume was published by royal authority in 1693, and contained fifty-seven views of palaces, abbeys, and castles of the Scottish nobility. The letterpress which accompanied this edition was written in Latin by Sir Robert Sibbald [q. v.], but Slezer procured an English translation for the second edition which appeared in 1710, without Sir Robert's consent, and a breach between them was the result. Though the book was esteemed of national interest, its sale failed to cover the expenses of production. In 1695 Slezer exhibited a specimen to the Scottish parliament, petitioning them to aid him in issuing two further volumes, the sketches for which were then ready. Parliament resorted to a curious expedient in order to find the money required by Slezer. A special tax of 16s. Scots was imposed on his behalf, conjointly with John Adair [q. v.], the hydrographer, upon every ton of goods exported in foreign ships from Scotland, and of 48. Scots per ton upon every Scottish ship above twelve tons burden exporting merchandise. This tax was to continue for five years. While the act was in force Slezer received, by his own account, 5301. sterling; but when it lapsed in 1698, it was only renewed after serious limitations had been adopted. The first portion of the tax was thenceforth to be devoted to the support of 'His Majesty's frigates;' handsome salaries were provided for the officials who administered the act, and Slezer and Adair were

to be paid out of the superplus.' Under this new arrangement Slezer received little or no emolument; his military pay had fallen into arrear, and his pecuniary embarrassments rapidly increased. In 1705 he again petitioned parliament, stating that he was then 6507. sterling out of pocket. In 1708 he declared that he ought to have obtained 1,1307. from the Tonnage Act, but he had never receaved the value of a single sixpence.' His whole claim then amounted to 2,3477. sterling, part of this sum being for clothing which he had ordered for his artillerymen, for he could not suffer them to go naked.' His claim was never fully met, and on more than one occasion he was forced to take refuge from his creditors in the sanctuary of Holyrood. His death took place on 24 June 1714. His eldest son, who was a mastergunner, died in 1699; but Slezer's widow and his second son Charles pursued the gcvernment with their claims, and obtained various payments up till 1723, though the whole sum was never fully paid.

It is as designer of the Theatrum Scotia' -a work of artistic, topographical, and historical value-that Slezer will be remembered. It passed through seven editions, which are dated respectively 1693, 1710, 1718, 1719, 1797, 1814, and 1874. Some of these editions are very rare. The edition of 1710 contained many sketches that were not included in the 1693 volume; but so carelessly was it edited that several of the places were misnamed on the pictures. Some of the sketches must have been drawn in 1678 -more than thirty years before-and Slezer failed to identify them accurately. Dr. Jamieson wrote an incomplete sketch of Slezer for the edition of 1874. In a volume of 'Delices de la Bretagne et l'Irlande,' published at Leyden in 1708, the Scottish views are reduced facsimiles of Slezer's pictures.

[Millar's Roll of Eminent Burgesses of Dundee, p. 203; Glamis Book of Record (Scot. Hist. Soc.), pp. 42, 150; Theatrum Scotia, ed. 1874, pref.; Dalton's Artillery Company in Scotland (Proc. of Royal Artillery Institution, 1895); Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. pt. i. pp. 132-5, 11th Rep. App. vii. p. 25; Acts of Parl. of Scot. ix. 492; Nicolson's Scot. Hist. Library, p. 27.1

A. H. M.

SLINGSBY, SIR HENRY (1602–1658), royalist, son of Sir Henry Slingsby, knt., of Scriven, Yorkshire, by Frances, daughter of William Vavasour of Weston in the same county, was born on 14 Jan. 1601-2. His father, who was knighted in 1602, was high sheriff of Yorkshire in 1611-12, and vicepresident of the council of the north in 1629, died in 1634 (Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby,