OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hill, George (1716-1808)

​HILL, GEORGE (1716–1808), serjeant-at-law, of an old Northamptonshire family, was born in 1716. He was admitted a member of Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar, practising at first as a conveyancer. He joined the midland circuit, and although his practice was small, he soon gained a great reputation for exceptional knowledge of case law. Although he was a scholar and a mathematician of considerable learning and attainments, as a lawyer he was so overwhelmed by his memory for cases that he was unable to extract from them clear general principles, and earned for himself the nickname of Serjeant Labyrinth. On 6 Nov. 1772 he became at once a serjeant and a king's serjeant. Of his absence of mind and abstraction among unpractical points of law many anecdotes are told (see Polson, Law and Lawyers, i. 76; Twiss, Life of Lord Eldon, i. 301, 325; Cradock, Memoirs, i. 248, iv. 149; Memoirs of Letitia Matilda Hawkins, i. 255; Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices, ii. 571). He died at his house in Bedford Square on 21 Feb. 1808, and was buried in the family vault at Rothwell, Northamptonshire, where there is an epitaph upon him by Bennett, bishop of Cloyne. He married Anna Barbara, daughter and heiress of Thomas Medlycote of Cottingham, Northamptonshire, by whom he had two daughters. His legal manuscripts were purchased of his executors by the Society of Lincoln's Inn, and are in the library there.
[Woolrych's Eminent Serjeants; Law Mag. 1844, p. 331; European Mag. i. 233; Romilly's Memoirs, i. 72.]
J. A. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hill, Adam

​HILL, ADAM (d. 1595), divine, probably born at Westbury, Wiltshire, was, according to his own account, educated under Bishop Jewel. He was fellow of Balliol College from 1568 to January 1572–3; graduated B.A. 1569, M.A. 1572, and B.D. and D.D. in 1591 (Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc., i. 269, II. iii. 21); and secured a reputation as a practical preacher. He was successively vicar of Westbury, Wiltshire, and Gussage, Dorsetshire. On 23 June 1586 he was installed as prebendary and succentor of Salisbury Cathedral. He died at Salisbury in February 1594–5, and was buried in the cathedral on the 19th.
A sermon which he preached at Chippenham, Wiltshire (28 Feb. 1589–90), on Christ's descent into hell, led Hill into a sharp controversy with one Alexander Hume, who republished a reply to it. Hill retorted with ‘A Defence of the Article, Christ descended into Hell,’ London, 1592, 4to, dedicated to John Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury. Here Hill prints his original sermon, with an appendix containing Hume's objections in full, and Hill's answers to them paragraph by paragraph. Hume is said to have issued a rejoinder. Hill also published: 1. ‘Godly Sermon, shewing the Fruits of Peace and War,’ London, 1588, 8vo. 2. ‘The Crie of England,’ a sermon on Gen. xviii. 21, 22, London, 1593, 8vo (Brit. Mus.).
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon., ed. Bliss, i. 623–4; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
S. L. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hill, Arthur

The ODNB is not definite on whether his mother was the first or second wife of Moyses Hill.
​HILL, ARTHUR (1601?–1663), colonel, born about 1601, was the second son of Sir Moyses Hill, knt., M.P., by his first wife, Alice, sister of Sorley Boye MacDonnell, and succeeded his elder brother's son, whose line failed, in the estates. Upon the outbreak of the civil war he inclined to the king's side, but eventually took service for the parliament, became a colonel, and acted on the Irish committee (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1649–50). His allegiance, however, was never very warm. With William Jephson, M.P., and Sir Robert King [q. v.] he obtained a warrant from parliament on 22 April 1643 to go to Oxford on Irish business (Commons' Journals, iii. 57). On 2 Aug. 1654 he was returned M.P. for cos. Down, Antrim, and Armagh (Members of Parliament, Official Return, pt. i. p. 503). Some grants which he received during the protectorate in co. Down were formed into the manors of Hillsborough and Growle. There he built a considerable place of strength, which after the Restoration was constituted a royal garrison by the name of Hillsborough Fort, and the office of constable there made hereditary in the family. Hill was created constable on 21 Dec. 1660, and was also sworn of the Irish privy council. He died in April 1663, aged 62. He married first Anne, daughter of Sir Richard Bolton [q. v.], lord chancellor of Ireland; and secondly, Mary, daughter of Sir William Parsons, one of the lords justices of Ireland, who was mother of his second son and eventual heir, the Right Hon. William Hill (1641?–1693).
[Commons' Journals, vols. iv. v.; Brereton's Travels (Chetham Soc.), p. 128; Burke's Peerage under ‘Marquis of Downshire.’]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hill, Alban

​HILL or HYLL, ALBAN, M.D. (d. 1559), physician, a native of Wales, studied at Oxford and at Bologna, where he proceeded doctor of physic. He `became famous for physics at London, not only the theoretical but practic part, and much beloved and admired by all learned men' (Wood, Athenæ Oxon.) He resided for many years in the parish at St. Alban, Wood Street, being `held in great respect, and esteemed one of the chief parishioners' (ib.) Caius calls him a good and learned man. He is mentioned in laudatory terms by Bassianus Landus of Piacenza in his `Anatomia,' 1605, vol ii. cap. xi. 225, with reference to a far from profound remark attributed to him about the uses of mesentery. Landus adds that Hill wrote on Galen, but no such writings are known to be extent. He became a fellow of the College of Physicians on 23 March 1552, was sensor from 1555 to 1558, and elect in 1558. He died on 22 Dec. 1559, and was buried in St. Alban's Church, Wood Street. His widow survived him until 31 May 1580.
C. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hill, Edwin

​HILL, EDWIN (1793–1876), mechanical inventor and writer on currency, second son of Thomas Wright Hill [q. v.], by Sarah Lea his wife, was born at Birmingham on 25 Nov. 1793. He was an elder brother of Sir Rowland Hill [q. v.], the inventor of penny postage. He showed great mechanical ingenuity in his youth, and entering the Fazeley Street Rolling Mills in Birmingham, rose to be manager. This post he threw up in 1827 to join his brother, Rowland Hill, in establishing a school at Bruce Castle, Tottenham. On the introduction of penny postage in 1840 he was appointed supervisor of stamps at Somerset House. Till his retirement in 1872 he had under his control the manufacture of stamps. By his inventive mechanical skill he greatly improved the machinery. In conjunction with Mr. Warren De la Rue he invented the machine for folding envelopes which was exhibited in the Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1856 he published a work under the title of ‘Principles of Currency: Means of Ensuring Uniformity of Value and Adequacy of Supply.’ In this he proposed ‘that government should prepare and issue under the authority of parliament an adequate amount of interest-bearing securities, almost identical with exchequer bills; and that these be made a legal tender for their principal sum, together with their accumulated interest up to the day of tender, according to a table to be printed upon the face of each bill.’ He published, moreover, pamphlets entitled ‘Criminal Capitalists’ (1870–2), by which he meant those owners of house-property who knowingly provided lodgings for criminals, or shops where stolen goods could be disposed of. He proposed to strike at crime by first striking at these landlords. He died on 6 Nov. 1876 at his residence, No. 1 St. Mark's Square, Regent's Park, and was buried in Highgate cemetery. He married Anne Bucknall, the younger daughter of a Kidderminster brewer, by whom he had ten children, seven of whom survived him.
[Memoir of M. D. Hill, by his Daughters, 1878; Life of Sir Rowland Hill, by G. B. Hill, 1880; Principles of Currency, by Edwin Hill, 1856; Transactions of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1871; Transactions of the International Prison Congress, 1872.]
G. B. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Levens, Peter

​LEVENS, PETER (fl. 1587), scholar and medical writer, was born ‘at or near Eske in Yorkshire,’ and proceeded to Oxford in 1552, apparently to Magdalen College. He was admitted B.A. 6 July 1556, was elected probationer-fellow of Magdalen ‘into a Yorkshire place,’ 19 Jan. 1557, and became ‘true and perpetual fellow,’ January 1559. He supplicated for M.A. February 1559–60, but the date of his admission is not known. He subsequently ‘taught a grammar school and practised physic.’ Wood styles him ‘an eminent physician.’
He published: 1. ‘Manipulus Vocabulorum. A Dictionarie of English and Latine wordes, set forthe in suche order, as none heretofore hath ben, the Englishe going before the Latine, necessary not onely for Scholers that want varietie of words, but also for such as use to write in English ​Meetre. Gathered and set forth by P. Levins, Anno 1570. Imprinted at London by Henrie Bynneman, for John Waley.’ The dictionary contains a preface to the reader and a dedicatory letter to ‘the right worshipful M. Stanley,’ treasurer of the mint. It is valuable for the light it throws on the contemporary pronunciation of English words, and has been reprinted by the Camden Society (1867, 4to) and the Early English Text Society (1867, 8vo), under the editorship of Mr. H. B. Wheatley. Mr. Wheatley supplies a preface and alphabetical index to both editions. The value of the dictionary was first pointed out in Mr. A. Way's edition of the ‘Promptorium Parvulorum’ (Camd. Soc.). 2. ‘A right profitable Book for all Diseases, called the Pathway to Health; wherein are most excellent and approved Medicines of great virtue; as also notable Potions and Drinks, and for the distilling of divers Waters, and Making of Oils, and other comfortable Receipts,’ London, 1587, 4to. This has a preface defending the use of the vulgar tongue in a learned work. It became popular, and was reprinted in 1596, 1608, 1632, 1644, 1654, 1664.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 548; Fasti, i. 149, 156; preface to E. E. T. Society's edition of Manipulus Vocabulorum.]
R. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lethlobor

Lethlobar mac Loingsig in the ODNB.
​LETHLOBOR (d. 871), Irish king, son of Longsech, first appears in history as victor in battle against the Danes in co. Down in 826. He was then a king of Dal Araidhe, a territory including the southern half of Antrim and the greater part of Down. His rule only extended over the southern half. In 853 he repulsed an invasion of Aodh MacNeill, and during his long life this was the only serious attack made by the greater Ulster upon the lesser. He became king of all lesser Ulster, or Ulidia, and died of a wound 'after a good life' (Ann. R. Eireann, i. 516), in 871. Ulidia was perhaps more subject to attack from without by the Danes, and from the land side by the increasingly powerful Cinel Eoghain and Oirghialla, than any other, and it is clear that Lethlobor was one of the most powerful of the kings of Ulidia. He was succeeded immediately by his son Cennetich as king of Dal Araidhe, and, after an interval, as king of Ulidia.
[Book of Leinster, MS. of the twelfth century, facs. fol. 41, cols. 3 and 5; Annals of Ulster, ed. Hennessy, i. 325, &c.; Annala Rioghachta Eireann, ed. Donovan, i. 516, &c.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Letts, Thomas

​LETTS, THOMAS (1803–1873), inventor of ‘Letts's Diaries,’ son of John Letts, a London bookbinder, by his wife Susan Spicer, was born at Stockwell, London, in 1803. He was educated at Dr. Crosby's school at Greenwich, and then apprenticed to his father's business. On his father's retirement about 1835 he continued to carry on the business, but devoted himself specially to the manufacture of diaries. Ruled diaries existed long before Letts's time, but he improved them and adapted them to a variety of requirements. By 1839 no less than twenty-eight varieties of the ordinary diary were issued, ranging from foolscap folio, one day to a page, to the small pocket diary of a few inches in size each way. Letts also issued interest tables, medical diaries, office calendars, parliamentary registers and guides, ledgers, log-books, clerical diaries, and washing-books (cf. Brit. Mus. Cat.) The sale gradually increased to several hundred thousands annually, and Letts erected large factories at New Cross. He acquired a property at Chale, Isle of Wight, and in 1864, on the occasion of the Shakespeare tercentenary, he erected a small Doric temple in the neighbouring woods as a memorial to the poet. This is still to be seen from the road above St. Catherine's Point. Letts died at Granville Park, Blackheath, on 8 Aug. 1873, and was buried in Norwood cemetery. He married, first, in 1837 Harriet Cory, by whom he had three sons and a daughter, and on her death Emma Horwood Barry, by whom he had seven children. Shortly after Letts's death the business was turned into a limited liability company, but in 1885 the company went into liquidation, and the entire diary business was purchased by Messrs. Cassell & Co. Thackeray, in his ‘Roundabout Papers,’ No. 18, first published in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ for January 1862, made ‘Letts's Diary’ the text of a New-year's sermon. He declared his preference for ‘one of your No. 12 diaries, three shillings cloth boards; silk limp, gilt edges, three and six; French morocco, tuck ditto, four and six.’
[Information kindly supplied by Thomas Alton Letts, esq., of New York.]
T. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Letheby, Henry

​LETHEBY, HENRY (1816–1876), analytical chemist, was born at Plymouth in 1816. He graduated M.B. at London University in 1842, and was also L.S.A. (1837) and Ph.D. He was lecturer on chemistry at the London Hospital, and for some years medical officer of health and analyst of foods for the city of London. He was also appointed chief examiner of gas for the metropolis under the board of trade. Letheby was an exceedingly accurate technological chemist, and contributed many papers to the ‘Lancet’ and other scientific periodicals. He was a fellow of the Linnean and Chemical Societies. He died on 28 March 1876 at his residence, 17 Sussex Place, Regent's Park, London. He left a widow. Letheby's chief work was a treatise on ‘Food, its Varieties, Chemical Composition, &c.,’ London, 1870, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1872. His official reports on the sanitary condition of London were published from time to time.
[Times, 30 March 1876; Medical Register for 1876 and 1877; Analyst, 1876, p. 15; Chemical News, 1876, p. 146; Public Health, 1876, p. 218; Med. Times and Gazette, 1876, p. 447; Men of the Reign.]
W. A. J. A.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lettice, John

1904 Errata appended.
​LETTICE, JOHN (1737–1832), poet and divine, son of John Lettice, clergyman, by Mary, daughter of Richard Newcome, rector of Wymington, was born on 27 Dec. 1737 at Rushden in Northamptonshire. His father died when he was fourteen, and left him to the guardianship of a maternal uncle. He was educated at Oakham School, and admitted to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1756, where he graduated B.A. 1761, M.A. 1764, S.T.B. 1771, and S.T.P. 1797. He became a fellow of his college, and in 1764 obtained the Seatonian prize with a poem on the conversion of St. Paul, which was published in 1765, and was reissued in the ‘Musæ Seatonianæ,’ 1772. In March 1765 he spent an evening with Dr. Johnson, who was visiting Cambridge. In 1768 he accompanied Sir Robert Gunning as chaplain and secretary to the British embassy at Copenhagen, was present at the palace revolution in 1772, and subsequently visited other parts of the continent. In 1785 he was presented by his college to the living of Peasmarsh (riding of Hastings, Sussex), in 1799 he was tutor to the Beckford family, and on 21 Feb. 1804 was nominated to the prebend of Seaford in the church of Chichester, both of which preferments he held till his death on 18 Oct. 1832. In his later years he was chaplain to the Duke of Hamilton. He was greatly respected by his parishioners, who erected a monument to his memory. Lettice married, first, a daughter of John Newling, an alderman of Cambridge; she died in January 1788: secondly, on 25 May 1788, a daughter of Dr. Hinckley of the parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, city of London.
Lettice published, apart from sermons and the Seatonian poem: 1. ‘Letters on a Tour through various parts of Scotland in 1792,’ London, 1794. 2. ‘A Plan for the safe Removal of Inhabitants not Military from Towns and Villages on the coasts of Great Britain in case of the threatened Invasion,’ London, 1803. 3. ‘The Village Catechist’ (addressed to the inhabitants of Peasmarsh), 1803. 4. ‘Fables for the Fireside’ (dedicated to the Marchioness of Douglas and Clydesdale), London, 1812. 5. ‘Suggestions on Clerical Eloquence,’ London, 1822. He contributed articles on Scottish biography, which were originally intended as an appendix to the work numbered 1 above, to the ‘European Magazine’ for 1794–5. He also translated (with Thomas Martyn) ‘The Antiquities of Herculaneum,’ from the Italian (only one vol. published, London, 1773), and ‘The Immortality of the Soul,’ a poem, from the Latin of Isaac Hawkins Browne the elder [q. v.], Cambridge, 1795.
[Didot's Nouvelle Biog.; Gent. Mag. 1788, pt. ii. p. 648, 1789 pt. i. p. 466, 1832 pt. i. pp. 477–9; Nichols's Lit. Ill. vi. 141 sq., vii. 48 sq., viii. 372; Graduati Cantabr.; Lettice's pref. to his Suggestions on Clerical Eloquence; Horsfield's Sussex; Watt's Bibl. Brit. ]
W. A. S.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.181 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 133 | ii | 32 | Lettice, John: for Church read Clerical |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Letherland, Joseph

​LETHERLAND, JOSEPH (1699–1764), physician, was born at Stratford-on-Avon in 1699. He entered the university of Leyden 30 Sept. 1722, and graduated M.D. 5 July 1724 with an inaugural dissertation, ‘Veterum medicorum sententiæ de Phrenitide curandâ’ (Leyden, 1724, 4to). Some years afterwards he was created doctor of medicine of Cambridge by royal mandate 9 April 1736, and thus qualified for the fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians, where he was admitted candidate 30 Sept. 1736, and fellow 30 Sept. 1737, afterwards holding the office of censor and other college dignities. He was elected physician to St. Thomas's Hospital 7 July 1736, and resigned that office at the close of 1758. In 1761 Letherland was appointed physician to the queen, on the recommendation of Dr. William Heberden the elder [q. v.], who had declined the honour. He died 31 March 1764, and was buried in the church of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, where a memorial tablet was placed to him.
Letherland always practised in London, but without becoming much known to the public, though he was highly esteemed by his colleagues for his learning and professional attainments. His classical learning was shown in a reply to Conyers Middleton's dissertation on the servile condition of physicians among the Romans, in which he vindicated the position of the Roman physicians: ‘Notæ breves in Dissertationem de Medicorum apud Romanos conditione a C. Middleton editam,’ 8vo, London, 1726. This ​was his only separate publication, but he is known to have contributed largely to John Fothergill's ‘Account of the Sore Throat attended with Ulcers,’ 1748. The historical portion, identifying the disease with one described by Spanish physicians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is admitted to be his work (Thomas Healde, Oratio Harveiana, 4to, London, 1765). Indeed he has the credit of being the first to draw attention to this disease (the modern diphtheria) in 1739 (John Chandler, On the Disease called a Cold, 1761, p. 56), though he modestly never asserted his claim to priority.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, ii. 135; English-speaking Students at Leyden (Index Soc.), 1883; Archives of St. Thomas's Hospital.]
J. F. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lettou, John

​LETTOU, JOHN (fl. 1480), printer, was the first printer who set up a printing-press in the city of London. He appears to have been of foreign extraction. His type, which is of peculiar excellence, so much resembles that of M. Moravus, a printer of Naples, that it is possible that Lettou learnt printing there. He printed in 1480, three years after Cotton set up his press in Westminster, an indulgence of Sixtus IV issued by John Kendall [see under Kendall, John, d. 1485], of which at least two editions are known. In the same year he printed, at the expense of William Wilcock, an edition by Thomas Penketh of Antonius Andreæ ‘Quæstiones super xii. libros Metaphysicæ.’ In 1481 Lettou printed, also at Wilcock's expense, an edition of Thomas Wallensis's commentary on the Psalms. About the same time he entered into partnership with William de Machlinia [q. v.], with new type, and they printed five law-books, including an edition of Littleton's ‘Tenures;’ a later edition of this work (1485?) bears the name of Machlinia alone as a printer, so that Lettou probably died or ceased printing about 1483. From the colophon to the first edition of the ​last-named work it appears his press was ‘Juxta ecclesiam omnium sanctorum’—the indefinite designation of eight London churches.
[Ames's Typogr. Antiq. ed. Herbert; Brit. Mus. Cat. of Early English Books to 1640; Gordon Duff's Early Printed Books, 1893.]
L. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Evans, William (d.1720?)

​EVANS, WILLIAM (d. 1720?), presbyterian divine, was educated at the college at Ystradwalter, then under the presidency of the Rev. Rees Prytherch. He was ordained at Pencader, near Carmarthen, in 1688, and continued pastor there for fifteen years. In 1703 he removed to Carmarthen to become pastor of the presbyterian congregation, and received in his house students for the christian ministry. He has been regarded as the founder of the Welsh Academy, from the fact that the education of divinity students first assumed under him a collegiate form. He was patronised both by the London funds and by the liberality of wealthy dissenters. Dr. Daniel Williams bequeathed a sum of money towards his support, and this has been continued to his successors to this day. He is said to have been a man of superior attainments as a scholar and divine, and to have devoted himself with great diligence and exemplary fortitude to the discharge of his professional duties in circumstances of difficulty and danger. He is supposed to have discontinued his labours in 1718, and he died in 1720. ​In 1707 he published in Welsh ‘The Principles of the Christian Religion,’ based apparently on the assembly's catechism; in 1714 he published and wrote a preface for ‘Gemmeu Doethineb’ (‘Gems of Wisdom’), a very interesting work by his old tutor, R. Prytherch; in 1717 he wrote a long preface to his friend and neighbour Iago ab Dewi's translation of Matthew Henry's ‘Catechism;’ in 1757 Abel Morgan published Evans's ‘Principles of the Christian Religion,’ which he had adapted so as to teach adult baptism.
R. J. J.