ARMSTEAD, HENRY HUGH (1828-1905), English sculptor, was first trained as a silversmith, and achieved the highest excellence with the “St George’s Vase” and the “Outram Shield.” He rose to the front rank among contemporary sculptors, his chief works being the external sculptural decorations of the colonial office in Whitehall, the sculptures on the southern and eastern sides of the podium of the Albert Memorial, the large fountain at King’s College, Cambridge, and numerous effigies, such as “Bishop Wilberforce” at Winchester, and “Lord John Thynne” at Westminster, with smaller portraiture and much ideal work. His sense of style and nobility was remarkable; and he was besides gifted with a fine power of design and draughtsmanship, which he put to good use in his early years for book illustration. He was elected associate of the Royal Academy in 1875 and a full member in 1880.
ARMSTRONG, ARCHIBALD (d. 1672), court jester, called “Archy,” was a native of Scotland or of Cumberland, and according to tradition first distinguished himself as a sheep-stealer; afterwards he entered the service of James VI., with whom he became a favourite. When the king succeeded to the English throne, Archy was appointed court jester. In 1611 he was granted a pension of two shillings a day, and in 1617 he accompanied James on his visit to Scotland. His influence was considerable and he was greatly courted and flattered, but his success appears to have turned his head. He became presumptuous, insolent and mischievous, excited foolish jealousies between the king and Henry, prince of Wales, and was much disliked by the members of the court. In 1623 he accompanied Prince Charles and Buckingham in their adventure into Spain, where he was much caressed and favoured by the Spanish court and, according to his own account, was granted a pension. His conduct here became more intolerable than ever. He rallied the infanta on the defeat of the Armada and censured the conduct of the expedition to Buckingham’s face. Buckingham declared he would have him hanged, to which the jester replied that “dukes had often been hanged for insolence but never fools for talking.” On his return he gained some complimentary allusions from Ben Jonson by his attacks upon the Spanish marriage. He retained his post on the accession of Charles I., and accumulated a considerable fortune, including the grant by the king of 1000 acres in Ireland. After the death of Buckingham in 1628, whom he declared “the greatest enemy of three kings,” the principal object of his dislike and rude jests was Laud, whom he openly vilified and ridiculed. He pronounced the following grace at Whitehall in Laud’s presence: “Great praise be given to God and little laud to the devil,” and after the news of the rebellion in Scotland in 1637 he greeted Laud on his way to the council chamber at Whitehall with: “Who’s fool now? Does not your Grace hear the news from Stirling about the liturgy?” On Laud’s complaint to the council, Archy was sentenced the same day “to have his coat pulled over his head and be discharged the king’s service and banished the king’s court.” He settled in London as a money-lender, and many complaints were made to the privy council and House of Lords of his sharp practices. In 1641 on the occasion of Laud’s arrest, he enjoyed a mean revenge by publishing Archy’s Dream; sometimes Jester to his Majestie, but exiled the Court by Canterburie’s malice. Subsequently he resided at Arthuret in Cumberland, according to some accounts his birthplace, where he possessed an estate, and where he died in 1672, his burial taking place on the 1st of April. He was twice married, his second wife being Sybilla Bell. There is no record of any legal offspring, but the baptism of a “base son” of Archibald Armstrong is entered in the parish register of the 17th of December 1643. A Banquet of Jests: A change of Cheare, published about 1630, a collection chiefly of dull, stale jokes, is attributed to him, and with still less reason probably A choice Banquet of Witty Jests ... Being an addition to Archee’s Jests, taken out of his Closet but never published in his Lifetime (1660).
ARMSTRONG, JOHN (1709-1779), British physician and writer, was born about 1709 at Castletown, Roxburghshire, where his father was parish minister. He graduated M.D. (1732) at Edinburgh University, and soon afterwards settled in London, where he paid more attention to literature than to medicine. He was, in 1746, appointed one of the physicians to the military hospital behind Buckingham House; and, in 1760, physician to the army in Germany, an appointment which he held till the peace of 1763, when he retired on half-pay. For many years he was closely associated with John Wilkes, but quarrelled with him in 1763. He died on the 7th of September 1779. Armstrong’s first publication, an anonymous one, entitled An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physic (1735), was a satire on the ignorance of the apothecaries and medical men of his day. This was followed two years after by the Economy of Love, a poem the indecency of which damaged his professional practice. In 1744 appeared his Art of Preserving Health, a very successful didactic poem, and the one production on which his literary reputation rests. His Miscellanies (1770) contains some shorter poems displaying considerable humour.
ARMSTRONG, JOHN (1738-1843), American soldier, diplomatist and political leader, born at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on the 25th of November 1758. His father, also named John Armstrong (1725-1795), a native of the north of Ireland, who had emigrated to the Pennsylvania frontier between 1745 and 1748, served successively as a brigadier-general in the Continental army (1776-77), as brigadier-general and then major-general of the Pennsylvania militia (1777-83), during the War of Independence, and was a member of the Continental Congress in 1779-1780 and again in 1787-1788. The son studied for a time at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), and served as a major in the War of Independence. In March 1783, while the Continental army was stationed at Newburgh (q.v.), New York, he wrote and issued, anonymously, the famous “Newburgh Addresses.” In 1784 he led a force of Pennsylvania militia against the Connecticut settlers in Wyoming Valley, and treated them in such a high-handed manner as to incur the disapproval even of the Pennsylvania legislature. In 1789 he married the sister of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York, and removed to New York city, where his own ability and his family connexion gave him great political influence. In 1801-2 and again in 1803-4 he was a member of the United States Senate. From 1804 to 1810 he was the United States minister to France, and in March 1806 he was joined with James Bowdoin as a special minister to treat through France with Spain concerning the acquisition of Florida, Spanish spoliations of American commerce, and the “Louisiana” boundary. During the War of 1812, he was a brigadier-general in the United States army from July 1812 until January 1813, and from then until August 1814 secretary of war in the cabinet of President Madison, when his unpopularity forced him to resign. “In spite of Armstrong’s services, abilities and experience,” says Henry Adams, “something in his character always created distrust. He had every advantage of education, social and political connexion, ability and self-confidence; ... but he suffered from the reputation of indolence and intrigue.” Nevertheless, he “introduced into the army an energy wholly new,” an energy the results of which were apparent “for half a century.” After his resignation he lived in retirement at Red Hook, New York, where he died on the 1st of April 1843. He published Notices of the War of 1812 (2 vols., 1836; new ed., 1840), the value of which is greatly impaired by its obvious partiality.
The best account of Armstrong’s career as minister to France and as secretary of war may be found in Henry Adams’s History of the United States, 1801-1817 (9 vols., New York, 1889-1890).