James Heywood Markland

James Heywood Markland (1788–1864) was an English solicitor and antiquary.

Born at Ardwick Green, Manchester, 7 December 1788, he was the fourth and youngest son of Robert Markland, a textile manufacturer there; his mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Hibbert of Manchester. At age 11 he was sent for his education to the house of the headmaster of Chester school.

Markland was trained as a solicitor in Manchester, but in 1808 roved to London and practised there. In 1814 he was appointed by the West India planters their parliamentary agent, and in the same year entered as a student at the Inner Temple. He remained in London in practice, being the head partner in the firm of Markland & Wright, until 1839, when he retired to Malvern. In 1841 he moved to Bath, Somerset and spent the rest of his life there.

Markland was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1809, and from 1827 to April 1829, when he resigned the post, acted as its director. He joined the Roxburghe Club at its second meeting (1813), when it was enlarged to 24 members, in 1816 became Fellow of the Royal Society, and on 21 June 1849 was created D.C.L. of the University of Oxford.

Also a supporter of church societies, Markland was entrusted by Mrs. Ramsden with the foundation of mission sermons in Cambridge and Oxford, and while he was resident in Bath three ladies, the Misses Mitford of Somerset Place, selected him for the distribution of £14,000 in charitable works in England and the colonies.

Markland died at his house, Lansdown Crescent, Bath, on 28 December 1864, and was buried in the new Walcot cemetery on 3 January 1866, the first window in Bath Abbey west of the transept being filled with glass to his memory. His library was dispersed at his death.

Markland wrote:

Markland edited for the Roxburghe Club in 1818 a volume of Chester Mysteries, de deluvio Noe, de occisione innocentium; assisted with George Ormerod's History of Cheshire; aided John Britton in his Beauties of England; and contributed articles to the Censura Literaria, the major one being on William Mason and to Notes and Queries.

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