HENRY, ROBERT, D.D., was the son of a farmer In the parish of St. Ninians, Stirlingshire, where he was born in 1718. lieviug com pleted the usual course of education for the Scottish church at the University of Edinburgh, he was licensed as a preacher in 1746, being then muter of the burgh or grammar-echool of Aonan in Dumfriea shire. In 1743 be was elected mioieter of a Presbyterian congrega tion at Carlisle, with which he remained till August 1760, when he removed to a similar situation in the town of I3arwiek•upon-Tweed. It is supposed to have been about this time that he conceived the project of his ' History of Great Britain, written on a new plan,' on which his literary reputation rests. The same year that ho established himself in Berwick he married a Miss Balderston, whose sister after wards married Gilbert Laurie, Esq., lord provost of Edinburgh; and this connection eventually led, in 1768, to Mr. Henry's removal to that city. His first appointment was as minister of the church of the New Grey Friars, which he retained till 1776, and then exchanged for the easier charge of one of the ministers of the Old Church, in which he continued till his death. His access to the libraries at Edinbnrgh encouraged him to proceed with the design of his History, which want of the necessary books had before almost induced him to relinquish. The first volume, in 4to, appeared in 1771, the second in 1774, the third in 1777, the fourth in 1781, and the fifth, bringing down the narrative to the accession of Henry VII., in 1785. The author, upon whom the degree of D.D. had been conferred by the University of Edinburgh in 1770, died in 1790; but before his death he had completed the greater part of another volume of his History, extending to the accession of Edward VL, which was published in 1793 under the superintendence of Malcolm Laing, Esq., who supplied the chapters that were wanting, and added an Appendix. Dr. Heury's History has, since its completion, been repeatedly reprinted in twelve volumes 8vo. The anther had published the successive quarto volumes on his own account ; but when the first octavo edition was proposed in 1786, he &old the property of the work to a publishing house for 10001., besides which the profits it had already yielded him amounted to 2300/. Io 1781, on the unsolicited application of Lord Mansfield, a pension of 1001. a year was granted to Dr. Henry by the king.
These facts are extracted from a biographical memoir of some length which appeared with the posthumous volume of the History, sod in which may be also found a diffuse account of Dr. Henry as a private member of society, in which character he appears to much advantage. His only other publication was a Sermon preached before the (Scottish) Society for propagating Christian Knowledge, in 1773. The early volumes of his History were assailed with unusual virulence as they successively appeared by Dr. Gilbert Stuart, well known as the author of various able and learned historical works. Stuart was a man of bad temper and little principle, and he was probably actuated in this affair by feelings of personal animosity to Dr. Henry or some of his friends; but he was a person of genuine learning and original research, as well is of great acuteness, and in many of his objections to the History there was much force and justice. Henry's cause, on the other hand, was taken up by his friends, and there is printed in the ' Memoir of his Life' a very encomiastic character of his work (so far as it bad proceeded), which is said to be "by one of the most eminent historians of the present age, whose history of the same period justly possesses the highest reputation," and "who died before the publication of the third volume,"—words which we suppose describe Mr. Ilume. Tim work had certainly considerable merit as the first attempt to write a History of England upon so extended a plan, combining the history of society and the general civilisstiou of the country with that of public events; and the author has collected a great mass of curious matter, a largo portion of which is not to be found in any of our common histories; but it has no pretensions to be considered as executed either classically or critically. It abounds in statements derived from sources of no authority, and in other negligence* and inaccuracies, partly arising from the character of the author's mind and acquirements, pertly the consequence of his pro vincial situation and want of acquaintance with or access to the best sources of information. In every one of the departments into which it is divided it is now very far indeed behind the state to which historical and archaeological knowledge has advanced.