Coxens, D.D., a celebrated English divine, was the son of the Rev. William Middleton, rector of Hinderswell in Yorkshire, and was born at Richmond on the 27th December 1683. At the age of seventeen he was admitted a pensioner of Trinity College, Cambridge, and after being chosen a scholar of his college, and gaining a bachelor's degree in 1702, he took deacon's orders, and exercised the clerical function for some time at Trumpington, near Cambridge. Having been elected a fellow of Trinity in 1706, he took the degree of M.A. during the following year; and in 1708 joined some of the fellows of his college in a petition to the Bishop of Ely, their visitor, against Bentley, the celebrated master of Trinity. Middleton did not at first take a very active part in this painful contest; yet the unpopular master soon saw in this strong, fiery youth one of his most dangerous enemies, and Bentley's partizans made an early attempt to blast his reputation. Such an attack only increased Middleton's popularity in the university, while it served to deepen his hostility towards the insensible and imperious scholar. After his marriage he held a small rectory in the Isle of Ely, in the gift of his wife, but was soon compelled, from the unhealthiness of the place, to return to Cambridge. Middleton, with a number of others, was created Doctor of Divinity by the royal mandate of George I., who visited Cambridge in 1717; but Bentley, who was regius professor of divinity at the time, would only grant the degree on terms by no means of a highly honourable kind. This gave rise to a fresh dispute between the two antagonists, in which Middleton gained a complete victory, and Bentley was degraded and deprived of his professorship. After "dragging the character of the fallen hero through three triumphant pamphlets," as a writer of the time phrases it, comparing the revenge to that of Achilles with Hector at his chariot wheels, Middleton found that he had established for himself a very considerable literary reputation. Whatever might be thought of the temper displayed in those productions, every one was ready to admit that in sprightly energy, scholarly elegance, and powerful invective, their author had few equals in England. Dr Monk remarks in his Life of Bentley that this production of Middleton's "was the first published specimen of a style, which for elegance, purity, and ease, yields to none in the whole compass of the English language. The acrimonious and resentful feeling which prompted every line is in some measure disguised by the pleasing language, the harmony of the periods, and the vein of scholarship which enlivens the whole tract." Flushed with his pamphleteering success, and still thirsting for further revenge against his fallen enemy, he rushed into print for the fourth time with his accustomed intrepidity, when his zeal overcoming his discretion, his vigilant antagonist succeeded in proving him guilty of libel in the Court of King's Bench. The court, however, was unwilling to pronounce sentence, and Middleton escaped by begging Bentley's pardon and paying the expenses of the action. The arrogant master of Trinity had little reputation now left him but that of a great scholar and critic; and he resolved to present the public with a fresh testimony to his merits in a new edition of the Greek Testament. The proposals and specimens were drawn up, however, with too great precipitation; and Middleton, who doubtless submitted the matter to a minute scrutiny, succeeded in detecting not a few serious flaws in the production, and boldly assaulted this corps deus of critics in his last and greatest stronghold. This exposure ran through two successive pamphlets, characterized by all Middleton's accustomed power, and with an additional display of learning and critical sagacity for which no one, even among his friends, would have given him credit. But the violent personal abuse was often of the lowest kind; and while disclaiming at the outset any personal spleen against his learned antagonist, it nevertheless soon became obvious that Middleton's former animosity had not yet been cooled down, and that he was prepared not only to strip Bentley of his reputation as a scholar, but also to rival him in that species of personal abuse in which the doctor of Trinity was so great a master.

The labour and expense to which Middleton had been subjected during those proceedings were regarded by his friends in the university as of such a public nature, and so much a vindication of the rights of their venerable institution, that they, by way of acknowledging his services, created the office of principal librarian, and conferred it upon him. His election met with much opposition, and his Middleton, old enemy keeping close upon the watch, found Middleton speaking too freely in the dedication to his Bibliotheca Ordinand. Method., respecting the jurisdiction of the King's Bench Court, for which he had him prosecuted and mulcted in L50.

In 1724 Middleton was compelled, from declining health, to seek some milder climate, and accordingly visited Rome, where he spent about twelve months, collecting, among other objects of interest, materials for his future work on the Paganism of the Popish Religion. On returning to England in 1725, Middleton, from some personal pique against the celebrated physician Dr Mead, published an attack upon the whole medical profession, entitled De Medicorum apud veteres Romanos degentium Conditione Dissertatio, &c. It gave rise to much keen pamphlet-writing; and Middleton was not slow to reply. In 1729 he published one of his greatest works, and one which met with a large share of popularity among the learned. This was his celebrated Letter from Rome, showing an exact conformity between Popery and Paganism, &c., in which he attempted to show that the rites, ceremonies, &c., of the Romish Church were borrowed from the pagan religion. Notwithstanding the great power put forth on this book, in the way of solid argument and forcible writing, it was nevertheless the means, from its free attack upon the Romish miracles, of giving offence to not a few Protestant divines, who charged the author with a want of respect for the apostolic miracles. Nor was his anonymous letter to Dr Waterland in 1731, respecting his method of defending the Christian cause, calculated to remove the impression. On the contrary, the views respecting the partial inspiration of the Scriptures expressed in that work almost led to his being deprived of his situation and of his college honours. At this juncture he felt called upon to come publicly forward, and in Some Remarks on a Reply to the Defence of the Letter to Dr Waterland, &c., to disavow his alleged hostility to Christianity, and express emphatically his belief in that system. But these assertions were not sufficient to drown suspicion, and not a few of his reverend brethren were still inclined to regard him as an unbeliever. They could not get over his allegation that there were "contradictions in the four evangelists which could not be reconciled," or that the "story of the fall of man was a fable or allegory;" and his opinions thus proved an effectual barrier to his clerical promotion. His merits as a scholar, however, were never called in question, and in 1731 he was appointed to the chair of natural history, just founded by Dr Woodward,—a position which he held till his second marriage in 1734. He wrote during the subsequent year A Dissertation concerning the Origin of Printing in England; and in 1741 appeared his greatest work, The History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero, written at the request of Lord Harvey, and published by subscription. He spent six years on this cherished task, and it met with great encouragement. The subscribers amounted to 3000, and the profits arising from the sale of the work enabled him to purchase a small estate at Hildersham, near Cambridge, where he spent the rest of his life. This work, while written with singular elegance and perspicuity, has been accused of partiality, in making too much of the great Roman. Middleton has, besides, been accused by Dr Parr, the editor of Bellendenus, of having borrowed largely in his Life of Cicero from the De Tribus Luminibus Romanorum of that eminent writer. Middleton's next publication was a translation of Cicero's Correspondence with Brutus, defending at the same time the authenticity of those epistles. Being resolved now to close his studies in profane literature, he in 1745 gave an account in his Germania quaedam Antiquitatis Erudite Monumenta, &c., of the specimens of ancient art which had come into his possession during his residence at Rome; and in 1747 he wrought up into a Treatise on the Roman Senate the substance of his letters to Lord Harvey twelve years before, on Middleton, the constitution of that celebrated institution. Now that his classical studies were completed, he immediately brought forward his Introductory Discourse, &c., to the Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church from the earliest ages through several Successive Centuries,—a work which appeared in 1749, and met with all but universal condemnation from the clergy, on account of its supposed antagonism to the authority of miracles. All that Middleton intended, however, in this vigorous work, was to place Protestant divines in the dilemma of either denying the authority of the fathers altogether, or, by accepting their testimony, to embrace the doctrines of the Romish Church, which he held to be clearly established by the evidence of the fathers. Gibbon, the historian, among others, chose the patristic horn, and became a Roman Catholic. In 1750 Middleton published his last work, An Examination of the Bishop of London's [Sherlock] Discourses on the Use and Intent of Prophecy, &c., which was not considered equal to some of his previous productions. He died at Hildersham on the 28th of July 1750, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Shortly before his death he subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles, on occasion of receiving a small living from Sir John Frederick,—an act which some of his brethren, as might have been expected, were inclined to characterize as insincere.

Middleton's miscellaneous works, exclusive of the Life of Cicero, were published in 1755 in 5 vols., containing some short pieces not previously published. Among his papers were found some materials for a life of Demosthenes, similar to that of the Roman orator, but he did not survive to complete his design.

Middleton, Sir Hugh, was the sixth son of Richard Middleton, Esq., governor of Denbigh Castle in Denbighshire. The dates of Sir Hugh's birth and the events of his early life are not known, until his great undertaking of supplying the city of London with water. He had been, however, a goldsmith in the metropolis, and had enriched himself by the successful working of certain copper mines in Wales. Nothing had been done by the citizens of London beyond securing the legal right during Elizabeth's reign of bringing water from any part of Middlesex or Hertfordshire to the metropolis, when, on 28th March 1606, this "citizen and goldsmith" came forward and proposed to bring a supply of water to London at his own cost. Two years afterwards he commenced his work at the Chadwell and Amwell springs, near Ware in Hertfordshire, and after encountering much annoyance and hard labour, the indefatigable and princely goldsmith saw the water in the cistern at Islington on Michaelmas day 1613. But if Middleton had the pleasure of seeing his stupendous undertaking completed, he had also the mortification to find his fortune well-nigh exhausted. He had been aided in the work by King James I.; and in acknowledgment of the generous services of this worthy citizen, his majesty knighted him, and afterwards created him a baronet. Sir Hugh was one of the principal shareholders in connection with the New River Company, but the profits amounted at first to the merest trifle—being little more than L10 during the first eighteen years; and it is supposed that Middleton at his death left a numerous family not very well provided for.

Middleton, Thomas, a distinguished dramatist, who flourished during the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., and respecting whom very little is known. He was chronologer to the city of London in 1620, and is supposed by Malone to have died in 1626. While Middleton does not belong to the first rank of dramatic writers, he was nevertheless highly esteemed by the men of his time, and had the honour of being joint worker, ac-

Thomas Fanshawe, D.D., the first English Bishop of Calcutta, was born at the village of Redlestone in Derbyshire, on the 26th of January 1769, where his father, Rev. Thomas Middleton, was rector. He received his early education at Christ's Hospital, London, and then entered Pembroke Hall, in the university of Cambridge, where he graduated with honours in 1792. Having received ordination, he became a curate at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, where he for some time edited a periodical publication called the Country Spectator. In 1795 he was presented by Dr Pretman, Archdeacon of Lincoln (to whose sons he had for some time been tutor), to the rectory of Tansor in Northamptonshire; and in 1799 he was made curate of St Peter's, Mancroft. His former patron in 1802 presented him to the rectory of Bytham in Lincolnshire, when he commenced to write The Doctrine of the Greek Article, applied to the Criticism and Illustration of the New Testament—a work which caused considerable controversy, especially among the Unitarians, on its first appearance in 1808. In 1812, after taking his degree of Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge, he received the archdeaconry of Huntingdon, and took up his residence at St Pancras, Middlesex, of which he had been recently appointed vicar.

Calcutta having about this time been made a bishop's see, Dr Middleton was appointed the first bishop on the 8th May 1814. In this position he displayed great diligence and zeal in promoting the cause of Christianity. He founded the Bishop's College at Calcutta for the education of missionaries for Asia in 1820, and instituted a consistory court at Calcutta. He died of fever at this eastern capital on the 8th of July 1822. Some of his sermons, charges, &c., were collected into a volume, and published at London, with a memoir of the author prefixed by Dr H. K. Bonney in 1824.

a manufacturing town of England, county of Lancaster, on the Manchester and Leeds Railway, and on the Rochdale Canal, 5 miles N.N.E. from Manchester. In 1775 it was only an inconsiderable village with 300 inhabitants, but it has now become an important seat of the cotton and silk manufactures. It contains several good streets and well-built houses, and has a parish church erected in the sixteenth century. It has also a grammar and other schools, a mechanics' institute, reading-room, and savings-bank. Coal mines are wrought in the vicinity. Pop. (1851) 5740.

a market-town of Ireland, province of Munster and county Cork, at the mouth of a small stream flowing into the N.E. branch of Cork harbour, 14 miles E. from Cork. It has a neat parish church, a Roman Catholic chapel, convent, free grammar school, two national schools, a fever hospital, dispensary, market-house, court-house, and bridewell. There are also two large distilleries, breweries, and flour-mills. It is within a mile of Ballinacurra harbour, where large shipments of agricultural produce and flour take place. Pop. (1851) 3676, besides 2334 in workhouse.