Lingard, JOHN

Lingard, JOHN, historian, was born at Winchester, 5th February 1771. Both his parents were Lincolnshire Catholics, his father a carpenter, his mother the daughter of a respectable farmer who had been ruined by the penal laws. A promising boy, he was sent in 1782 by Bishop Talbot to the English College of Douay (q. v.), where he remained till in 1793 it was broken up by the Revolution. The Catholic Relief Act enabling Catholics to open schools in England, the Douay community was transferred first to Crook Hall, near Durham, and in 1808 to Ushaw. Lingard, who had accepted the office of tutor in Lord Sturton's family, in 1794 resumed his theological studies, and, next year receiving priest's orders, became vice-president of the college, prefect of the studies, and professor of Philosophy. In 1811 he accepted the secluded mission of Hornby, near Lancaster, declining the offer of the presidency of Maynooth, as fourteen years later of a cardinal's hat; and here he 'grew old in illustrious obscurity.' He twice visited Rome, in 1817 and 1825; in 1821 obtained his doctorate from Pius VII.; and in 1839 received a crown pension of £300. He died at Hornby, 17th July 1851, and was buried in the cloister at Ushaw. His first important work, the Antiquity of the Anglo-Saxon Church (2 vols. 1806; 3d and much enlarged ed. 1845), was but the pioneer of what eventually became the labour of his life—a History of England to 1688 (8 vols. 1819-30; 6th ed. 10 vols. 1854-55). This from the outset attracted much attention; and the first two editions brought its author £4133. It was fiercely assailed in the Edinburgh Review; but Dr Lingard in his reply displayed so much erudition, and so careful a regard for original authorities, that the result was to add materially to his reputation as a scholar and a critic. The chief mark of its Catholic origin is not seldom the absence of Protestant bias and prejudice; still, it is as declaring the views of a candid and judicious Catholic that the later volumes retain a permanent value. The earlier volumes have been largely superseded. For Lingard's minor writings, which were numerous, see the Memoir by Canon Tierney, prefixed to vol. x. of the 6th ed. of the History.