MARKHAM, GERVASE (or Jervis) (1568?-1637), English poet and miscellaneous writer, third son of Sir Robert Markham of Cotham, Nottinghamshire, was born probably in 1568. He was a soldier of fortune in the Low Countries, and later was a captain under the earl of Essex’s command in Ireland. He was acquainted with Latin and several modern languages, and had an exhaustive practical acquaintance with the arts of forestry and agriculture. He was a noted horse-breeder, and is said to have imported the first Arab. Very little is known of the events of his life. The story of the murderous quarrel between Gervase Markham and Sir John Holles related in the Biographia Britannica (s.v. Holles) has been generally connected with him, but in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Clements R. Markham, a descendant from the same family, refers it to another contemporary of the same name, whose monument is still to be seen in Laneham church. Gervase Markham was buried at St Giles’s, Cripplegate, London, on the 3rd of February 1637. He was a voluminous writer on many subjects, but he repeated himself considerably in his works, sometimes reprinting the same books under other titles. His booksellers procured a declaration from him in 1617 that he would produce no more on certain topics.
Markham’s writings include: The Teares of the Beloved (1600) and Marie Magdalene’s Teares (1601) long and rather commonplace poems on the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, both reprinted by Dr A. B. Grosart in the Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library (1871); The most Honorable Tragedy of Sir Richard Grinvile (1595), reprinted (1871) by Professor E. Arber, a prolix and euphuistic poem in eight-lined stanzas which was no doubt in Tennyson’s mind when he wrote his stirring ballad; The Poem of Poems, or Syon’s Muse (1595), dedicated to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Sidney; Devoreux, Vertues Teares (1597). Herod and Antipater, a Tragedy (1622) was written in conjunction with William Sampson, and with Henry Machin he wrote a comedy called The Dumbe Knight (1608). A Discourse of Horsemanshippe (1593) was followed by other popular treatises on horsemanship and farriery. Honour in his Perfection (1624) is in praise of the earls of Oxford, Southampton and Essex, and the Souldier’s Accidence (1625) turns his military experiences to account. He edited Juliana Berners’s Boke of Saint Albans under the title of The Gentleman’s Academie (1595), and produced numerous books on husbandry, many of which are catalogued in Lowndes’s Bibliographer’s Manual (Bohn’s ed., 1857-1864).
MARKHAM, MRS, the pseudonym of Elizabeth Penrose (1780-1837), English writer, daughter of Edmund Cartwright, the inventor of the power-loom. She was born at her father’s rectory at Goadby Marwood, Leicestershire, on the 3rd of August 1780. In 1804 she married the Rev. John Penrose, a country clergyman in Lincolnshire and a voluminous theological writer. During her girlhood Mrs Penrose had frequently stayed with relatives at Markham, a village in Nottinghamshire, and from this place she took the nom de plume of “Mrs Markham,” under which she gained celebrity as a writer of history and other books for the young. The best known of her books was A History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the End of the Reign of George III. (1823), which went through numerous editions. In 1828 she published a History of France. Both these works enjoyed a wide popularity in America as well as in England. The distinctive characteristic of “Mrs Markham’s” histories was the elimination of all the “horrors” of history, and of the complications of modern party politics, as being unsuitable for the youthful mind; and the addition to each chapter of “Conversations” between a fictitious group consisting of teacher and pupils bearing upon the subject matter. Her less well-known works were Amusements of Westernheath, or Moral Stories for Children (2 vols., 1824); A Visit to the Zoological Gardens (1829); two volumes of stories entitled The New Children’s Friend (1832); Historical Conversations for Young People (1836); Sermons for Children (1837). Mrs Markham died at Lincoln on the 24th of January 1837.
See Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and his Friends (2 vols., London, 1891); G. C. Boase and W. P. Courtney, Bibliotheca Cornubiensis (3 vols., London, 1874-1882).
MARKHAM, WILLIAM (1719-1807), archbishop of York, was educated at Westminster and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was one of the best scholars of his day, and attained to the headship of his old school and college in 1753 and 1767 respectively. He held from time to time a number of livings, and in 1771 was made bishop of Chester and tutor to George prince of Wales. In 1777 he became archbishop of York, and also lord high almoner and privy councillor. He was for some time a close friend of Edmund Burke, but his strong championship of Warren Hastings caused a breach. He was accused by Lord Chatham of preaching pernicious doctrines, and was a victim of the Gordon riots in 1780. He died in 1807.
MARKHOR (“snake-eater”), the Pushtu name of a large Himalayan wild goat (Capra falconeri), characterized by its spirally twisted horns, and long shaggy winter coat. From the Pir-Panjal range of Kashmir the markhor extends westwards into Baltistan, Astor, Hunza, Afghanistan and the trans-Indus ranges of the Punjab. The twist of the horns varies to a great extent locally, the spiral being most open and corkscrew-like in the typical Astor animal, and closest and most screw-like in the race (C. falconeri jerdoni) inhabiting the Suleiman and adjacent ranges.