RUSHWORTH, JOHN (c. 1612-1690), the compiler of the Historical Collections commonly described by his name, was the son of Lawrence Rushworth of Acklington Park, Warkworth, Northumberland. In 1638 he was appointed solicitor to the town of Berwick. He was enrolled in Lincoln's Inn in 1641, and was called to the bar in 1647. He attended all public occasions of a political and judicial character, such as proceedings before the Star Chamber or the Council, and made shorthand notes of them.
On April 25, 1640, he was appointed an assistant clerk to the House of Commons. He became secretary to Fairfax, and then, for a short time, to Cromwell. He was afterwards employed by the council of State and during the protectorate, and sat in Cromwell's parliament for Berwick.
He made his peace with the Government of Charles II., and though he was threatened with trial as a regicide he was not seriously molested. During the reign of Charles II. he continued to act as agent for the town of Berwick, and he sat for it in parlia ment. He was also for a time agent for Massachusetts. From 1684 till his death on May 12, 169o, he was a resident in the King's Bench prison. At this time he had destroyed his memory by over-indulgence in drink. The collection of papers which he made was published in eight volumes folio between 1659 and '701. The volumes from the fourth onwards appeared after his death.
RUSKIN, JOHN (1819-190o), English writer and critic, was born in London, at Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, on Feb. 8, 1819, being the only child of John James Ruskin and Margaret Cox. They were Scots, first cousins, the grandchildren of a certain John Ruskin of Edinburgh (1732-178o). John Ruskin, the author's grandfather, was a wine merchant in Edinburgh, who ran through his fortune, and ended his days in debt. His son, John James Ruskin (1785-1864), father of the author, was sent, on leaving Edinburgh High School, to London to enter the wine trade. There, in 1809, he founded the sherry business of Ruskin, Telford and Domecq; Domecq being proprietor of a famous vineyard in Spain, Telford contributing the capital of the firm, and Ruskin having sole control of the business. Ruskin built up a great business, paid off his father's debts and formed near London a most hospitable and cultured home, where he main tained his taste for literature and art.
Margaret Ruskin, the author's mother, was a handsome, strong, stern, able, devoted woman of the old Puritan school, Calvinist in religion, unsparing of herself and others, rigid in her ideas of duty, proud, reserved and ungracious. The child was brought up under a rigid system of nursing, physical, moral and intellectual; kept without toys, not seldom whipped, watched day and night, but trained from infancy in music, drawing, reading aloud and ob servation of natural objects. When he was four the family re moved to a house on Herne Hill, then a country village, with a garden and rural surroundings. The father, who made long tours on business, took his wife, child and nurse year after year across England as far as Cumberland and Scotland, visiting towns, cathedrals, castles, colleges, parks, mountains and lakes. At 14 the child was taken through Flanders, along the Rhine, and through the Black Forest to Switzerland, where he first imbibed his domi nant passion for the Alps. His youth was largely passed in syste matic travelling in search of everything beautiful in nature or in art. And to one so precocious, stimulated by a parent of much culture, ample means and great ambition, this resulted in an almost unexampled aesthetic education. In childhood also he be gan a systematic practice of composition, both in prose and verse. His mother trained him in reading the Bible, of which he read through every chapter of every book year by year; and to this study he justly attributes his early command of language and his pure sense of style. His father read to him Shakespeare, Scott, Don Quixote, Pope and Byron, and most of the great English classics; and his attention was especially turned to the formation of sentences and to the rhythm of prose. He began to compose both in prose and verse as soon as he had learned to read and write, both of which arts he taught himself by the eye. He wrote enormous quantities of verse, and began dramas, romances and imitations of Byron, Pope, Scott and Shelley.