Bland, Elizabeth

, a lady remarkable both for her knowledge of the Hebrew language, and for a peculiar skilfulness in writing it, was born about the time of the restoration, and was daughter and heir of Mr. Robert Fisher of Long-acre. April 26, 1681, she married Mr. Nathanael Bland (then a linen-draper in London, afterwards lord of the manor of Beeston in Yorkshire), by whom she had six children, who all died in their infancy, excepting one son named Joseph, and a daughter called Martha, who was married to Mr. George Moore of Beeston. She was instructed in the Hebrew language by the lord Van Helmont, which she understood to such a degree of perfection, that she taught it to her son and daughter.

Among the curiosities of the Royal Society is preserved of her writing, a phylactery in Hebrew, of which Dr. Grew has given us a description in his “Account of rarities preserved at Gresham college,” London, 1681, folio. It was written by her at the request of Mr. Thoresby, and she | it to that repository. By the two pedigrees of the family, printed in Mr. Thoresby’s Ducatus Leodiensis, pages 209 and 587, it seems that she was living in 1712. This is all the account we have been able to procure either of her or her writings, which probably were considerable, as her attainments in this one branch of learning were so uncommon. ¹