Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/275

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monstrations in the garden in each of the six summer months, and to transmit to the Royal Society the fifty specimens per annum required by the terms of Sir Hans Sloane's donation of the garden. Lists of the plants sent for several years are in the Sloane MSS. Philip Miller [q. v.] was gardener throughout Rand's tenure of the office of præfectus, and it was in 1736 that Linnæus visited the garden. Dillenius's edition of Ray's ‘Synopsis’ (1724) contains several records by Rand, whose assistance is acknowledged in the preface, and he is specially mentioned by Elizabeth Blackwell [q. v.] as having assisted her with specimens for her ‘Curious Herbal’ (1737–9), which was executed at Chelsea. He is one of those who prefix to the work a certificate of accuracy, and a copy in the British Museum Library has manuscript notes by him. In 1730, perhaps somewhat piqued by Philip Miller's issue of his ‘Catalogus’ in that year, Rand printed an ‘Index plantarum officinalium in horto Chelseiano.’ In a letter to Samuel Brewer, dated ‘Haymarket, July 11, 1730’ (Nichols, Illustrations, i. p. 338), he says that the Apothecaries' Company ordered this to be printed. In 1739 Rand published ‘Horti medici Chelseiani Index Compendiarius,’ an alphabetical Latin list occupying 214 pages. The year of his death is given by Dawson Turner as 1743 (Richardson Correspondence, p. 125); but he was succeeded in the office of demonstrator by Joseph Miller in 1738 or 1740. His widow presented his botanical books and extensive hortus siccus to the company, and bequeathed 50s. a year to the præfectus horti for annually replacing twenty decayed specimens in the latter by new ones. This herbarium was preserved at Chelsea, with those of Ray and Dale, until 1863, when all three were presented to the British Museum (Journal of Botany, 1863, p. 32). Rand was a fellow of the Royal Society in 1739. Linnæus retained the name Randia, applied by Houston in Rand's honour to a genus of tropical Rubiaceæ.

[Field and Semple's Memoirs of the Botanic Garden at Chelsea, 1878, pp. 41–63; Trimen and Dyer's Flora of Middlesex, 1869, pp. 388–9.]

G. S. B.

RANDALL, JOHN (1570–1622), puritan divine, was born in 1570 at Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, and sent when only eleven to St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he matriculated on 27 Nov. 1581. He removed to Trinity College, and graduated B.A. on 9 Feb. 1585; was elected a fellow of Lincoln College on 6 July 1587, and proceeded M.A. on 9 July 1589. Among his pupils at Lincoln was the puritan Robert Bolton [q. v.] On the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Oxford, in August 1592, Randall was appointed to ‘frame and oversee the stage for the academical performance given’ in her honour. Afterwards Randall studied divinity, and was admitted B.D. on 28 June 1598. On 31 Jan. 1599 he was presented to the rectory of St. Andrew Hubbard, Little Eastcheap, London. There he made a reputation as a staunch puritan and effective preacher; but his health failed, and he died at his house in the Minories during May 1622. He was buried in St. Andrew Hubbard. By his will, signed 13 April, proved 9 June 1622, he bequeathed property to the poor of Great Missenden, All Hallows, Oxford, and St. Andrew's parishes; a tenement called Ship Hall to Lincoln College, Oxford, and other houses and moneys to his brothers Edward and Joshua, to his nephews, and to eight married sisters or their representatives. His wife and a daughter predeceased him. His portrait, painted when fellow of Lincoln College, hangs in the common room there.

In addition to separate sermons, issued posthumously by his friend William Holbrook, Randall left for publication ‘Three-and-Twenty Sermons or Catechisticall Lectures upon the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, preached Monthly before the Communion,’ London, 1630, 4to; published by his executor, Joshua Randall.

[Foster's Alumni Oxon. early series, p. 1231; Clark's Indexes, i. 32, ii. 111, iii. 127; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 319; Wood's Fasti, i. 226, 249, 278; Kennett's Register, p. 735; Lipscombe's Hist. of Buckinghamshire, i. 490, ii. 389; Brook's Lives of the Puritans, ii. 296; Newcourt's Repertorium Eccles. i. 265; Bagshawe's Life and Death of Mr. Bolton, pp. 7, 8; Cat. of Books printed before 1640; Lansdowne MS. 984, f. 27; cf. Will 57, Savile, P. C. C. Somerset House. The register of Missenden before 1700 is not extant.]

C. F. S.

RANDALL, JOHN (fl. 1764), schoolmaster and agriculturist, may have been the John Randall who graduated B.A. from Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1718 and M.A. in 1727. Later in the century he described himself as master of the academy at Heath, near Wakefield; no mention of him appears in Cox's history of Wakefield grammar school. Subsequently he carried on a private school at York. Six pupils resided with him. At York, too, he professed to resolve all questions relating to annuities, leases, reversions, livings, and matters of intricate accounts, and he interested himself in practical agriculture.