# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lyte, Henry (1529?-1607)

​LYTE, HENRY (1529?–1607), botanist and antiquary, born at Lytescary, Somerset, about 1529, was the eleventh in direct descent of his name settled at that place, and was the second and eldest surviving son of John Lyte, by his first wife, Edith Horsey, who died in 1556. Lyte became a student at Oxford about 1546; but it is doubtful if he took a degree. Anthony à Wood writes of him: ‘After he had spent some years in logic and philosophy, and in other good learning, he travelled into foreign countries, and at length retired to his patrimony, where, by the advantage of a good foundation of literature made in the university and abroad, he became a most excellent scholar in several sorts of learning.’ His son records that he ‘was admitted of Clyffordes Inne.’ From 1559 he seems to have managed his father's Somerset estate until the latter's death in 1576, when his stepmother, who had already sown discord between him and his father, brought a writ of dower against him. Lyte seems to have served as sheriff, or perhaps only as under-sheriff, of Somerset during the reign of Mary, and perhaps until the second year of Elizabeth. He died in the house in which he was born, on 15 Oct. 1607, and was buried at the north end of the transept of Charlton Mackrell Church. Lyte was thrice married: in September 1546 to Agnes, daughter and heiress of John Kelloway of Collumpton, Devon, who died in 1564, and by whom he had five daughters; in July 1565 to Frances, daughter of John Tiptoft, citizen of London, who died in 1589, and by whom he had three sons and two daughters; and in 1591 to Dorothy, daughter of John Gover of Somerton, Somerset, by whom he had two sons and a daughter.
Lyte was a distant connection of Aubrey, who speaks of his ‘deare grandfather Lyte,’ and of a ‘cos. Lyte of Lytes-Cary,’ and says that Henry Lyte ‘had a pretty good collection of plants for that age,’ though an extant list in the handwriting of Lyte's second son and successor, Thomas, enumerates only various fruit-trees.
Lyte's first and most important work was his translation of the ‘Cruydeboeck’ of Rembert Dodoens (Antwerp, 1554), which he executed from the French translation of De l'Escluse (1557). His copy of the French edition, with numerous notes in Latin and English in his neat handwriting, endorsed ‘Henry Lyte taught me to speake English,’ is now in the British Museum. The first edition of the translation was printed in folio at Antwerp, in order to secure the woodcuts of the original. It has 779 pages and 870 cuts, about thirty of which are original, and is mostly in black letter. It bears the title, ‘A niewe Herball or Historie of Plantes. … first set foorth in the Doutche or Almaigne tongue by that learned D. Rembert Dodoens, Physition to the Emperour, and now ​first translated out of French into English by Henry Lyte, Esquyer. At London by me Gerard Dewes, dwelling in Pawles Churchyarde, at the signe of the Swanne, 1578.’ On the back of the title-page is Lyte's coat of arms and a crest, ‘a swan volant silver upon a trumpet gold,’ which was not actually granted him by Clarenceux king of arms until the following year. This is followed by a dedication to Queen Elizabeth, dated from Lytes Cary, commendatory verses, and a portrait of Dodoens. Lyte added very little original matter to the text. A second edition, without any woodcuts, was printed in London by Ninian Newton, in square 8vo, in 1586, and a third by Edm. Bollifant, in the same size, in 1595. A folio edition, also without woodcuts, was published by Edward Griffin in 1619. Editions are stated, probably in error, to have been published in 1589, 1600, and 1678. An abridgment of it by W. Ram was published in 4to in 1606, under the title of ‘Rams little Dodoen.’
Lyte's second work was ‘The Light of Britayne; a Recorde of the honorable Originall and Antiquitie of Britaine,’ 1588, also dedicated to Elizabeth, and containing her portrait. Its object is to trace the descent of the British from the Trojans. Lyte presented a copy of this work to the queen on 24 Nov. 1588, when she went in state to St. Paul's to return thanks for the defeat of the Armada (Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, ii. 539; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vii. 569–70). The ‘Light of Britayne’ was reprinted in 1814; two copies, one in the British Museum, and the other in the possession of Mr. H. Maxwell Lyte, C.B., Lyte's lineal representative, were printed on vellum. In 1592 Lyte wrote two small works on the same subject, which have never been printed. These are ‘Records of the true Origin of the noble Britons,’ and ‘The Mystical Oxon of Oxenford, alias a true and most ancient Record of the Original of Oxford and all Britain.’ Wood describes these manuscripts as ‘written with the author's own hand very neatly, an. 1592, the character small, lines close, some words in red ink, and others only scored with it,’ and he says that the latter contains ‘many pretty fancies which may be of some use … by way of reply for Oxon against the far-fetch'd antiquities of Cambridge’ (Athenæ Oxon. ii. cols. 22–3). These manuscripts, after being in the possession of the Oxford antiquaries, Miles Windsore and Bryan Twyne, are now in the archives of the university of Oxford, not, as stated by Lowndes, in the university library, nor, as Mr. Carew Hazlitt says, at University College. Lyte also drew up ‘A table whereby it is supposed that Lyte of Lytescarie sprange of the Race and Stocke of Leitus … and that his Ancestors came to Englande first with Brute,’ now in the British Museum (Harleian Rolls, H. 26), and also a roll containing a poem entitled, ‘A description of the Swannes of Carie that came first under mightie Brute's protection from Caria in Asia to Carie in Britain.’ The latter was printed in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 6th ser. viii. 109–10, and is now in Mr. Maxwell Lyte's possession.
Lyte's second son, who succeeded him, was Thomas Lyte [q. v.] the genealogist. His third son, Henry (b. 1573), was one of the earliest users of decimal fractions, and published in 1619 ‘The Art of Tens and Decimall Arithmetike,’ dedicated to Charles, prince of Wales, and based mainly on the French work ‘La Disme,’ published in 1590. He is described as a teacher of arithmetic in London.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon.; Pulteney's Biographical Sketches of the Hist. of Botany; William George's Lytescary Manor House, 1879; Lyte's Works, and Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archæological Society, vol. xxxviii., by H. Maxwell Lyte.]
G. S. B.