(J. W. Fo.)
HARRISON, FREDERIC (1831- ), English jurist and historian, was born in London on the 18th of October 1831. Members of his family (originally Leicestershire yeomen) had been lessees of Sutton Place, Guildford, of which he wrote an interesting account (Annals of an Old Manor House, 1893). He was educated at King’s College school and at Wadham College, Oxford, where, after taking a first-class in Literae Humaniores in 1853, he became fellow and tutor. He was called to the bar in 1858, and, in addition to his practice in equity cases, soon began to distinguish himself as an effective contributor to the higher-class reviews. Two articles in the Westminster Review, one on the Italian question, which procured him the special thanks of Cavour, the other on Essays and Reviews, which had the probably undesigned effect of stimulating the attack on the book, attracted especial notice. A few years later Mr Harrison worked at the codification of the law with Lord Westbury, of whom he contributed an interesting notice to Nash’s biography of the chancellor. His special interest in legislation for the working classes led him to be placed upon the Trades Union Commission of 1867-1869; he was secretary to the commission for the digest of the law, 1869-1870; and was from 1877 to 1889 professor of jurisprudence and international law under the council of legal education. A follower of the positive philosophy, but in conflict with Richard Congreve (q.v.) as to details, he led the Positivists who split off and founded Newton Hall in 1881, and he was president of the English Positivist Committee from 1880 to 1905; he was also editor and part author of the Positivist New Calendar of Great Men (1892), and wrote much on Comte and Positivism. Of his separate publications, the most important are his lives of Cromwell (1888), William the Silent (1897), Ruskin (1902), and Chatham (1905); his Meaning of History (1862; enlarged 1894) and Byzantine History in the Early Middle Ages (1900); and his essays on Early Victorian Literature (1896) and The Choice of Books (1886) are remarkable alike for generous admiration and good sense. In 1904 he published a “romantic monograph” of the 10th century, Theophano, and in 1906 a verse tragedy, Nicephorus. An advanced and vehement Radical in politics and Progressive in municipal affairs, Mr Harrison in 1886 stood unsuccessfully for parliament against Sir John Lubbock for London University. In 1889 he was elected an alderman of the London County Council, but resigned in 1893. In 1870 he married Ethel Berta, daughter of Mr William Harrison, by whom he had four sons. George Gissing, the novelist, was at one time their tutor; and in 1905 Mr Harrison wrote a preface to Gissing’s Veranilda (see also Mr Austin Harrison’s article on Gissing in the Nineteenth Century, September 1906). As a religious teacher, literary critic, historian and jurist, Mr Harrison took a prominent part in the life of his time, and his writings, though often violently controversial on political and social subjects, and in their judgment and historical perspective characterized by a modern Radical point of view, are those of an accomplished scholar, and of one whose wide knowledge of literature was combined with independence of thought and admirable vigour of style. In 1907 he published The Creed of a Layman, Apologia pro fide mea, in explanation of his religious position.
HARRISON, JOHN (1693-1776), English horologist, was the son of a carpenter, and was born at Faulby, near Pontefract in Yorkshire, in the year 1693. Thence his father and family removed in 1700 to Barrow in Lincolnshire. Young Harrison at first learned his father’s trade, and worked at it for several years, at the same time occasionally making a little money by land-measuring and surveying. The bent of his mind, however, was towards mechanical pursuits. In 1715 he made a clock with wooden wheels, which is in the patent museum at South Kensington, and in 1726 he devised his ingenious “gridiron pendulum,” which maintains its length unaltered in spite of variations of temperature (see [Clock]). Another invention of his was a recoil clock escapement in which friction was reduced to a minimum, and he was the first to employ the commonly used and effective form of “going ratchet,” which is a spring arrangement for keeping the timepiece going at its usual rate during the interval of being wound up.
In Harrison’s time the British government had become fully alive to the necessity of determining more accurately the longitude at sea. For this purpose they passed an act in 1713 offering rewards of £10,000, £15,000 and £20,000 to any who should construct chronometers that would determine the longitude within 60, 40 and 30 m. respectively. Harrison applied himself vigorously to the task, and in 1735 went to the Board of Longitude with a watch which he also showed to Edmund Halley, George Graham and others. Through their influence he was allowed to proceed in a king’s ship to Lisbon to test it; and the result was so satisfactory that he was paid £500 to carry out further improvements. Harrison worked at the subject with the utmost perseverance, and, after making several watches, went up to London in 1761 with one which he considered almost perfect. His son William was sent on a voyage to Jamaica to test it; and, on his return to Portsmouth in 1762, it was found to have lost only 1 minute 54½ seconds. This was surprisingly accurate, as it determined the longitude within 18 m., and Harrison claimed the full reward of £20,000; but though from time to time he received sums on account, it was not till 1773 that he was paid in full. In these watches compensation for changes of temperature was applied for the first time by means of a “compensation-curb,” designed to alter the effective length of the balance-spring in proportion to the expansion or contraction caused by variations of temperature. Harrison died in London on the 24th of March 1776. His want of early education was felt by him greatly throughout life. He was unfortunately never able to express his ideas clearly in writing, although in conversation he could give a very precise and exact account of his many intricate mechanical contrivances.
Among his writings were a Description concerning such Mechanism as will afford a Nice or True Mensuration of Time (1775), and The Principles of Mr Harrison’s Timekeeper, published by order of the Commissioners of Longitude (1767).
HARRISON, THOMAS (1606-1660), English parliamentarian, a native of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, the son of a butcher and mayor of that town, was baptized in 1606. He was placed with an attorney of Clifford’s Inn, but at the beginning of the war in 1642 he enlisted in Essex’s lifeguards, became major in Fleetwood’s regiment of horse under the earl of Manchester, was present at Marston Moor, at Naseby, Langport and at the taking of Winchester and Basing, as well as at the siege of Oxford. At Basing Harrison was accused of having killed a prisoner in cold blood. In 1646 he was returned to parliament for Wendover, and served in Ireland in 1647 under Lord Lisle, returning to England in May, when he took the side of the army in the dispute with the parliament and obtained from Fairfax a regiment of horse. In November he opposed the negotiations with the king, whom he styled “a man of blood” to be called to account, and he declaimed against the House of Lords. At the surprise of Lambert’s quarters at Appleby on the 18th of July 1648, in the second civil war, he distinguished himself by his extraordinary daring and was severely wounded. He showed a special zeal in bringing about the trial of the king. Charles was entrusted to his care on being brought up from Hurst Castle to London, and believed that Harrison intended his assassination, but was at once favourably impressed by bis bearing and reassured by his disclaiming any such design. Harrison was assiduous in his attendance at the trial, and signed the death-warrant with the fullest conviction that it was his duty. He took part in suppressing the royalist rising in the midlands in May 1649, and in July was appointed to the chief command in South Wales, where he is said to have exercised his powers with exceptional severity. On the 20th of February 1651 he became a member of the council of state, and during Cromwell’s absence in Scotland held the supreme military command in England. He failed in stopping the march of the royalists into England at Knutsford on the 16th of August 1651, but after the battle of Worcester he rendered great service in pursuing and capturing the fugitives. Later he pressed on Cromwell the necessity of dismissing the Long Parliament, and it was he who at Cromwell’s bidding, on the 20th of April 1653, laid hands on Speaker Lenthall and compelled him to vacate the chair. He was president of the council of thirteen which now exercised authority, and his idea of government appears to have been an assembly nominated by the congregations, on a strictly religious basis, such as Barebone’s Parliament which now assembled, of which he was a member and a ruling spirit. Harrison belonged to the faction of Fifth Monarchy men, whose political ideals were entirely destroyed by Cromwell’s assumption of the protectorate. He went immediately into violent opposition, was deprived of his commission on the 22nd of December 1653, and on the 3rd of February 1654 was ordered to confine himself to his father’s house in Staffordshire. Suspected of complicity in the plots of the anabaptists, he was imprisoned for a short time in September, and on that occasion was sent for by Cromwell, who endeavoured in a friendly manner to persuade him to desist. He, however, incurred the suspicions of the administration afresh, and on the 15th of February 1655 he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle, being liberated in March 1656 when he took up his residence at Highgate with his family. In April 1657 he was arrested for supposed complicity in Venner’s conspiracy, and again once more in February 1658, when he was imprisoned in the Tower. At the Restoration, Harrison, who was excepted from the Act of Indemnity, refused to take any steps to save his life, to give any undertaking not to conspire against the government or to flee. “Being so clear in the thing,” he declared, “I durst not turn my back nor step a foot out of the way by reason I had been engaged in the service of so glorious and great a God.” He was arrested in Staffordshire in May 1660 and brought to trial on the 11th of October. He made a manly and straightforward defence, pleading the authority of parliament and adding, “May be I might be a little mistaken, but I did it all according to the best of my understanding, desiring to make the revealed will of God in His holy scriptures a guide to me.” At his execution, which took place at Charing Cross on the 13th of October 1660, he behaved with great fortitude.
Richard Baxter, who was acquainted with him, describes Harrison as “a man of excellent natural parts for affection and oratory, but not well seen in the principles of his religion of a sanguine complexion, naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity and alacrity as another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too much, but naturally also so far from humble thoughts of himself that it was his ruin.” Cromwell also complained of his excessive eagerness. “Harrison is an honest man and aims at good things, yet from the impatience of his spirit will not wait the Lord’s leisure but hurries me on to that which he and all honest men will have cause to repent.” Harrison was an eloquent and fluent expounder of the scriptures, and his “raptures” on the field of victory are recorded by Baxter. He was of the chief of those “fiery spirits” whose ardent and emotional religion inspired their political action, and who did wonders during the period of struggle and combat, but who later, in the more sober and difficult sphere of constructive statesmanship, showed themselves perfectly incapable.