MACAULAY, MRS. CATHERINE (SAWBRIDGE) (1731-1791).—­Dau. of a landed proprietor of Kent, was an advocate of republicanism, and a sympathiser with the French Revolution.  She wrote a History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Elevation of the House of Hanover (8 vols., 1763-83), which had great popularity in its day, some critics, e.g. Horace Walpole, placing it above Hume.  Though a work of no real research or authority, it is in the main well written.

MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD (1800-1859).—­Historian, essayist, and statesman, s. of Zachary M., a wealthy merchant, and one of the leaders of the anti-slavery party, was b. at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, and ed. at a private school and at Trinity Coll., Camb., of which he became a Fellow in 1824, and where, though he gained distinction as a classical scholar and debater, he did not take a high degree, owing to his weakness in mathematics.  About the time of his leaving the Univ. his prospects were entirely changed by the failure of his father’s firm.  He accordingly read law, and in 1826 was called to the Bar, which led to his appointment two years later as a Commissioner in Bankruptcy.  He had by this time made his first appearance in print, in Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, and in 1825 he formed the connection with the Edinburgh Review which redounded so greatly to the fame of both.  His first contribution was the famous essay on Milton, which, although he afterwards said of it that “it contained scarcely a paragraph which his matured judgment approved,” took the reading public by storm, and at once gave him access to the first society in London, in which his extraordinary conversational powers enabled him to take a leading place.  He now began to turn his mind towards public life, and by favour of Lord Lansdowne sat in the House of Commons for his family borough of Calne.  Entering the House in 1830 in the thick of the Reform struggle, M. at once leaped into a foremost place as a debater, and after the passage of the Reform Bill sat as one of the two members for the new borough of Leeds, and held office as Sec. to the Board of Control.  The acquaintance with Indian affairs which he thus gained led to his appointment as a member of the Supreme Council of India, whither he went in 1834.  Here his chief work was the codification of the criminal law, which he carried out with great ability, and by which he wrote his name on the history of the empire.  By the regard for the rights of the natives which he showed, he incurred much ill-will in interested quarters.  For this he consoled himself with the pleasures of literature, which gradually assumed the preponderance in his mind over political ambitions.  In 1838 he returned to England.  The next year he began The History of England, but for some time to come his energies were still divided between this task, the demands of the Edinburgh Review, and politics.  He was elected for