John Thomas Barber Beaumont

He had his works displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and was appointed miniature painter to the Duke of Clarence, the future king William IV of Great Britain.

[3] In 1803, when Napoleon threatened to invade England, Beaumont raised a rifle corps named The Duke of Cumberland's Sharp Shooters.

[2] His troops were reported to be such accurate shots that on one occasion he held a target in Hyde Park, London while the corps fired at it from a distance of 150 yards.

Beaumont was a supporter of Caroline of Brunswick in her long-running dispute with George IV, and had the County Fire office in Regent Street decorated with lamps to celebrate her tactical victory over the royal divorce bill in 1820.

Beaumont also took an active part in the exposure of a fraudulent insurance office, the West Middlesex, writing a letter to The Times about it in 1839.

[4][6] Beaumont, an investor in South America and supporter of its independence from colonial rule, knew Bernardino Rivadavia, during his stay in London, and set up the Rio de La Plata Agricultural Association, with shares held also by Rudolph Ackermann.

The Cisplatine War, between the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and the Empire of Brazil, intervened to make further settlement and even communication difficult.

[16] Initially the chapel was used for broad-minded services, where the ministers were Philip Harwood, and Thomas Wood of the Brixton Unitarian congregation, and using a liturgy by Robert Fellowes.

[19] Its successor, the People's Palace, was opened in 1887; it was built by the Trust on the Mile End Road site of the old Bancroft's School, under the influence of Walter Besant, and to a design by Edward Robert Robson.

In the longer term the Institution was one of the organisations leading up to the founding of Queen Mary, University of London, which now has a Barber Beaumont Chair of Humanities, currently occupied by Quentin Skinner.