James Swinburne lived to be over one hundred years of age, the third Fellow of the Royal Society to do this. The first was Sir Moses Haim Montefiore who was born in Leghorn on 24 October 1784 and died in this country on 28 July 1885, having settled here as a young man. He was elected into the Society on 16 June 1836. He is still well remembered as an outstanding philanthropist and a fearless defender of his fellow Jews all over the world. The second was Henry Nicholas Ridley the botanist who died in 1956. One other Fellow who died a few days before his hundredth birthday might well be mentioned; he was Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Secretary of the Académie des Sciences and later President of that body. Fie was born on 11 February 1657 and died on 9 January 1757. Family, Early Life and Background The Swinburne family is an ancient one as a glance at
Burke's Peerage
will show; they are essentially Northumbrian. The baronetcy dates from 1660. John Swinburne, father of the first Baronet, was promised a baronetcy by Charles I but the patent of creation never passed the seal. He died in 1652, eight years before the Restoration, His son, also John Swinburne, was created a Baronet in 1660 and is called in the patent ‘Virum patrimonio censu et morum probitate spectabilem’. Swinburne on his father’s side was descended from Flotspur, of whom he dryly remarks in his personal record ‘was a lively member of society but not noticeably scientific’. One of Swinburne’s ancestors (Sir John Swinburne, Bart.) was a Fellow of the Society elected 26 February 1818. Like so many of his contemporaries of the period he was an ardent antiquarian and F.S.A. Humphry Davy was his proposer for the Society. He founded the Antiquarian Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, closely modelled on the L.S.A., and during his lifetime maintained the most friendly intercourse between the two Societies. He, like our Swinburne, lived to a great age, dying a few weeks short of his entry into his hundredth year.
