5. Sir Ashton Lever established his natural history museum at Leicester House, Leicester
Square, in 1774, and charged 5s. 3d. admission. He offered to sell his collection
to the British Museum in 1783, but the trustees declined to buy it. Lever disposed
of his museum in 1788, and his collection soon moved to the south bank of the Thames,
where it was dispersed by auction in 1806. Capt. James Cook had set sail on his last
voyage in July 1776, and was killed by Hawaiians on what he named the Sandwich Islands
(now Hawaii) in Feb. 1779; his expedition returned to England in 1780. Both in
DNB.