ancient English chronicler, was born about the end of the eleventh century, and was brought up by Alcuinus of Anjou, a canon of Lincoln Cathedral. After taking orders he was made archdeacon of Huntingdon. The date of his death is not known. His History of England, in eight books, extends from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the accession of Henry II. (A.D. 1154.) It has been nowhere printed except in Savile's Scriptores post Bedam, Lond. 1596. In so far as it is a contemporary history, Huntingdon's work possesses little or no value, but in an antiquarian point of view it is one of the most valuable heir-looms transmitted to us by the twelfth century. It is interspersed with a good deal of verse, partly original and partly copied. The author himself states that, taking Bede as his model, he added much from other sources, and borrowed from the chronicles which he found in ancient libraries. In vol. ii. of Wharton's Anglia Sacra is a long letter from Huntingdon to a friend, full of interesting anecdotes of the kings, prelates, and other notable personages of his day.

Henry, Matthew, the author of the celebrated Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, was born in 1662 at Broad Oak, a farm-house near Iscoyd, in Flintshire. He was the son of Philip Henry, one of the 2000 ministers who were ejected from their livings in 1662 for refusing to conform to the Act of Uniformity. Unlike the majority of his fellow-sufferers, Philip Henry was spared all personal privation or hardship as the consequence of his non-conformity by the accident of private means which he had received with his wife. He was thus enabled to give a good education to his son Matthew, who, after making considerable progress in the study of law at Gray's Inn, abandoned that profession, and took orders as a dissenting minister. In 1687 he was appointed to a charge at Chester, where he remained till 1712, in which year he was translated to Hackney. Two years later (June 22, 1714), he died suddenly of apoplexy at Nantwich while on a journey from Chester to London.

Matthew Henry's Exposition, the work by which he is now remembered, is a commentary of a practical and devotional rather than of a critical kind, ranging over the whole of the Old Testament, and extending into the New as far as Romans. At this point it was broken off by the author's death, but the work was finished by a number of clergymen, whose names are recorded in most editions of the book. In a critical point of view, the Exposition is quite valueless; yet its freshness, variety of thought, its high moral tone, and its well-sustained flow of good writing, have secured it the foremost place among the works of its class. There are few better things in English literature than the comments on the parable of the prodigal son. That, however, must be acknowledged the finest passage in the whole work. Besides the Exposition, Matthew Henry wrote a Life of Mr Philip Henry; Directions for Daily Communion with God; A Method for Prayer; A Scriptural Catechism, and several other works.

There are two Lives of Matthew Henry: the first by W. Tong, 8vo, 1716, and the second (a much better one) by Mr. Williams, prefixed to his edition of the Exposition, 3 vols., Lond. 1828.

Henry, Robert, D.D., the author of the History of Great Britain, written on a new plan, was born in 1718 at a farm-house in the parish of St Ninian's, near Stirling. He was educated first at the school of his native parish, afterwards at the grammar-school of Stirling, and finally at the University of Edinburgh. Beginning public life as master of the grammar-school of Annan, he afterwards (in 1746) took orders and became the minister of a Presbyterian congregation at Carlisle. In 1760 he removed to a similar charge at Berwick-upon-Tweed, where he married a Miss Balderston, daughter of a surgeon in the town. It was during his stay at Berwick (where he signalized himself by his public spirit and zeal in promoting the local charitable schemes) that the idea of his History first occurred to him. But the dearth of books and the other difficulties of a provincial situation compelled him to postpone the execution of his design, till, through the influence of his wife's relations, he was translated to Edinburgh as minister of the New Greyfriars. He was then encouraged by the abundance of resources opened to him in the public libraries, and the ease with which he had access to them, to proceed with his great design. The first volume of the History appeared in 1771, and the others followed at irregular intervals till 1785, in which year the fifth was published, bringing down the narrative to the accession of the Tudor dynasty. The historian, who had been made a D.D. by the University of Edinburgh, died in 1790, before his sixth volume was quite ready for the press. Four years after his death it was published under the care of Malcolm Laing who supplied the missing chapters, and performed the editorial work with great accuracy and ability.

Henry's History was undoubtedly a great advance upon all the works of the kind that had been attempted in England before his day. His design, which, up to the measure of his knowledge and ability, he carried out with decided success, was to engraff upon the narrative of the great political events of each era an account of the domestic state and social progress of the people within the same period. Despite the care with which Henry conducted his researches, his work is now superseded. The true sources of history were at that time hardly open to the writer, and Henry was consequently obliged often to adopt authorities even then doubtful and now wholly exploded. Nor are his faults redeemed by the qualities that still make Hume's the standard History of England. He does not conceive or draw the characters of the great personages that figure in his History with any depth of insight or skill in delineation. He is likewise totally wanting in that philosophic power which enabled his illustrious contemporary to take the wide and generalized views of history that distinguish his work. These faults of Henry's were even in his own day pointed out by his arch enemy, Gilbert Stuart, with a ferocious malignity worthy of the worst frenzy of John Dennis. There is a large substratum of truth in Stuart's criticisms, yet they breathe so completely the spirit of a literary cut-throat, as their author undoubtedly was, that our moral sympathies go entirely with the victimized historian. Stuart made no secret of his resolution to ruin the sale of Henry's work, and by his ruthless reviews of it in various influential journals he gained his point—at least for a time. But it was only for a time, for Henry realized altogether from his work L.3900, and in 1781, through the influence of Lord Mansfield, was rewarded for his labours with a pension of L.100 a year by George III. (The details of Henry's life are to be found in a biographical sketch prefixed to the posthumous volume of his History. An account of his quarrel with Gilbert Stuart is given in Isaac D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, vol. ii. p. 63.)

Henry, William, a distinguished chemical philosopher, was born at Manchester, December 12, 1774. He was the son of Mr Thomas Henry, a zealous cultivator of chemical science. In early life an accident disqualified him for the sports of boyhood, and thus early developed a taste for study which was fostered by his first teacher, the Rev. Ralph Harrison, one of the best instructors of youth at that time in the north of England. On leaving Mr Harrison's academy, Henry became private secretary to Dr Percival, a physician of great general accomplishments and refined taste, who directed his course of reading with equal kindness and judgment. For five years he remained in the house of this valuable friend, and after some preliminary medical study in the infirmary of Manchester, removed, in 1795-6, to the University of Edinburgh, where some of the greatest masters of moral and physical science were then teaching. So powerful was the stimulus there given to his mental powers, that he often said, the rest of his life, active as it was, appeared a state of inglorious repose when contrasted with this season of unremitting effort. Prudential considerations obliged him to leave Edinburgh at the end of a year; but in 1805 he once more resumed his studies there, and two years later received his diploma of M.D. The interval between the two periods of his residence at Edinburgh was spent partly in the duties of medical practice at Manchester, and partly in superintending a chemical work commenced by his father, which gave him great facilities for prosecuting original researches in his favourite science. In 1797 he sent to the Royal Society of London the first of a long series of scientific memoirs, with which he enriched the Transactions of that body. Its object was to re-establish the title of carbon to be ranked among elementary bodies, which had been denied by Austin, Beddoes, and other eminent chemists. He afterwards discovered a fallacy in his own reasoning, which he detected and exposed, in a subsequent memoir, before it was noticed by any other chemist. In 1800 he published in the Philosophical Transactions his experiments on muriatic acid gas. Previous to the discoveries of Davy oxygen was regarded as the sole principle of acidity; and muriatic acid was consequently believed to be composed of oxygen associated with an unknown radical. Henry's experiments had been made with the view of disengaging this imaginary element. When Davy's theory was propounded, many years after this date, Henry was one of the earliest converts. In 1803 he published his elaborate experiments on the quantity of gases absorbed by water at different temperatures, and under different pressures. The result of these was the establishment of the law that "water takes up of gas, condensed by one, two, or more additional atmospheres, a quantity which would be equal to twice, thrice, &c., the volume absorbed under the common pressure of the atmosphere." In 1808 (the year in which he became a Fellow of the Royal Society) Henry described in the Philosophical Transactions a form of apparatus adapted to the combustion of larger quantities of gases than could be fired in eudiometric tubes. This apparatus, though now superseded, gave more accurate results than had ever before been attained. In the following year, 1809, the Copley gold medal was awarded to him for his valuable contributions to the Transactions of the Royal Society. For the next fifteen years he continued his experiments on the gases, making known the results of them from time to time to the Society. In his last communication, in 1824, he claimed the merit of having conquered the only difficulty that remained in a series of experiments on the gaseous substances issuing from the destructive distillation of coal and oil, and proved the exact composition of the fire-damp of mines. Availing himself of the property (recently discovered by Döbereiner) in finely-divided platinum, of causing gaseous combinations, he proved the exact proportions which the residues, after the action of chlorine on oil and coal gases, bear to each other.

All the experiments of Dr Henry to which we have hitherto alluded bore upon aeriform bodies; but though these were his favourite subjects of study, his acquaintance with general chemistry is proved by his Elements of Experimental Chemistry to have been both sound and extensive. This work was one of the first on chemical science published in this country, which combined great literary elegance with the highest standard of scientific accuracy. His comparative analyses of many varieties of British and foreign salts were models of accurate analysis, and were important in dispelling the prejudices then popular in favour of the latter for economical purposes. His memoir on the theories of galvanic decomposition earned the cordial approval of Berzelius, as being among the first to maintain that view to which he himself pinned his faith.

It is to be regretted that Dr Henry did not contribute more to the literature of science. His biographical notices of his great contemporaries, Priestley, Wollaston, and Davy, have been justly pronounced as among the best examples of that kind of composition in the English language. His contrast between Davy and Wollaston may recall Playfair's celebrated contrast between Black and Hutton, both in the qualities common to the minds compared, and in the vigour which marks both compositions. Especially is it to be regretted that he did not live to carry out the great literary project for which he had collected materials—a history of chemical discovery from the middle of the last century. Henryson. He could have made it one of the most popular books of science in our tongue. His son and biographer claims a very high degree of merit for his literary compositions, and particularly for his familiar letters. The concurrent testimony of all authorities proves that the general estimate of Dr Henry appended by his son, Dr Wm. Charles Henry, to his Biographical Account of the late Dr Henry, is by no means partial or overdrawn. "In the general intercourse of society Dr Henry was distinguished by a polished courtesy, by an intuitive propriety, and by a considerate forethought, and respect for the feelings and opinions of others; qualities arising out of the same high-toned sensibility that guided his tastes in letters, and that softened and elevated his whole moral frame and bearing. His comprehensive range of thought and knowledge, his proneness to general speculation in contradistinction to detail, his ready command of the refinements of language, and the liveliness of his feelings and imagination, rendered him a most instructive and engaging companion. To the young, and more especially to such as gave evidence of a taste for liberal studies, his manner was peculiarly kind and encouraging."

At intervals during his whole life Dr Henry suffered severely from the effects of the accident already mentioned which befell him in early life. This produced paroxysms of intense neuralgic agony, which rendered the extirpation of the principal nerves of the hand necessary; but this failed to afford the expected relief; and latterly, the irritation of the whole nervous system deprived him of sleep, and caused his death on September 2, 1836.