Lithgow

Lithgow, WILLIAM, Scottish traveller, was born at Lanark in 1582. He had already visited the Shetlands, Bohemia, Switzerland, &c., when, in 1610, he set out from Paris, by way of Italy and Greece, to Palestine and Egypt, performing most of this and his subsequent journeys on foot. His second tramp led him through North Africa from Tunis to Fez and back, and home by way of Hungary and Poland. In his third and last journey (1619-21) to Spain via Ireland, he was seized as a spy at Malaga, tortured both by his jailers and by inquisitors, and only released through the agency of the English consul. After he returned to London he became an object of commiseration to the king and his court. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, promised him reparation, but contented himself with promising. So Lithgow assaulted, or by another account was assaulted by, him in the king's ante-room, for which he was clapt into the Marshalsea. He died at Lanark, perhaps in 1645. His enthusiastic but most interesting Rare Adventures and Paineiful Pergrinations was published in a complete form in 1632 (12th ed. 1814), though an incomplete version came out in 1614. Besides this he wrote accounts of The Siege of Breda (1637) and the Siege of Newcastle (1645; new ed. 1820), Poems (ed. by James Maidment, 1863), and other works.