His other literary forgeries were: (1) The Pedigree of Burgum (a Bristol pewterer), professed to have been discovered in the muniment-room of St. Mary’s Church, Redcliffe. He accordingly printed a history of the “De Bergham” family, with a poem called The Romaunt of the Cnyghte, by John de Bergham (fourteenth century). (2) A forged account of the opening of the old bridge, signed “Dunhelmus Bristoliensis,” and professing to have been copied from an old MS. (3) An Account of Bristol, by Turgotus, “translated out of Saxon into English, by T. Rowley.” This forgery was made for the use of Mr. Catcott, who was writing a history of Bristol.
Ireland (S. W. H.) published, in folio, 1796, Miscellaneous Papers and Instruments, under the hand and seal of William Shakespeare, including the tragedy of King Lear and a small fragment of Hamlet, from the original, price £4 4s. He actually produced MSS. which he had forged, and which he pretended were original.
On April 2, 1796, the play of Vortigern and Rowena, “from the pen of Shakespeare,” was announced for representation. It drew a most crowded house; but the fraud was detected, and Ireland made a public declaration of his impositions, from beginning to end.
Mentz, who lived in the ninth century, published fifty-nine decretals, which he asserted were by Isidore of Seville, who lived three centuries previously. The object of these forged letters was to exalt the papacy and to corroborate certain dogmas.
At Bremen, in 1837, were printed nine books of Sanchoni´athon, and it was said that the MSS. had been discovered in the convent of St. Maria de Merinhâo by a Colonel Pereira in the Portuguese army; but it was ascertained that there was no such convent, nor any such colonel, and that the paper of this “ancient” MS. bore the water-mark of Osnabrück paper-mills.
Forgive, Blest Shade ... This celebrated epitaph in Brading Churchyard, Isle of Wight, is an altered version, by the Rev. John Gill (curate of Newchurch), of one originally composed by Mrs. Anne Steele, daughter of a Baptist minister at Bristol.
Fornar´ina (La), so called because she was the daughter of a baker (Fornajo), is the name under which Raphael’s mistress is known. Her name is said to have been Margherita. Raphael painted several portraits of this woman, the most famous being in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, and her face appears to have suggested many of his most beautiful faces in other works.
Forrest (George), Esq., M.A., the nom de plume of the Rev. J. G. Wood, author of Every Boy’s Book (1855), etc.
Forsythe (Dick), Man of the world who comes to spend a few weeks in a country town with his invalid mother, astonishes and fascinates the natives of Ashwist, and falls in love with Lois Howe, the rector’s daughter. She has the bad taste to prefer a plainer man.—Margaret Deland, John Ward, Preacher (1888).
Fortescue (Ellen). Orphan niece adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton, shy, gentle, timid, and affectionate. Upon her death-bed Ellen’s mother has charged the child to shield her brother from blame everywhere and always. Performance of her promise to do this bring upon the sister a weight of suspicion that humbles her to the dust and nearly breaks her heart. She is cleared by her brother’s confession of his own wrong doing.—Grace Aguilar, Home Influence (1850).