Beriah Botfield (1807-1863)
1840 Beriah Botfield of Norton Hall, Northamptonshire, became a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.[1]
1864 Obituary [2]
MR. BERIAH BOTFIELD, M.P., M.A., F.R.S., &C., was descended from the ancient Shropshire family of Rotevyle, a branch of which had settled at Hopton Court and Decker Hill, Salop.
He was the eldest son of Mr. Beriah Botfield of Norton Hall, Northampton, where the son was born on the 5th of March, 1807.
He received his education at Harrow, and through life took every opportunity of showing his attachment to his early school, to the library of which he made munificent contributions, and he established a Medal there in 1853. He was entered at Christ Church, Oxford, and graduated as B.A. in 1828, and M.A. in 1847.
He was returned to Parliament for Ludlow, in the Conservative interest, in 1837, and with short intermissions he continued to represent that borough until the period of his decease. He was also a Deputy Lieutenant for Northamptonshire and Shropshire, and was Sheriff for the former county in 1831. His scholastic and literary attainments were of a high order, and they were recognised abroad by his nomination as a Chevalier of the Saxon Order of Albert the Brave, and of the Belgian Order of Leopold.
He was the Secretary of the Roxburghe Club, for which position his antiquarian knowledge eminently fitted him. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries, and was a Member of several other learned and scientific bodies. He was a frequent contributor to the periodical scientific literature of the day, and the author of several well-known works, among which may be mentioned various tracts upon bibliography, communicated to the Philobiblion Society; Prefaces to the first editions of the Greek and Roman Classics, and of the Sacred Scriptures; Stemmata Botevilliana; Expenses of England in the 13th and 14th Centuries; and Notes on the Cathedral Libraries of England.
He joined the Institution of Civil Engineers as an Associate May 5th, 1840, and frequently attended the meetings, taking great interest in the discussions, more especially in those connected with the iron manufacture, with which he was connected in Staffordshire and Shropshire.
At his decease, which occurred at his residence in London, on the 7th of August, 1863, in his fifty-eighth year, he left a bequest to the Institution of Civil Engineers, to whose library he had previously been a liberal contributor.
He was a man of distinguished manners, great kindness and urbanity, and had not only the will but the means to confer benefits where timely aid was needed, and he rarely lost an opportunity of acting liberally.