Volume 2

Athenae Oxonienses. An exact history of all the writers and bishops who have had their education in the University of Oxford. To which are added the Fasti, or annals of the said university / By Anthony à Wood.

  • Anthony Wood
Date:
1813-1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Athenae Oxonienses. An exact history of all the writers and bishops who have had their education in the University of Oxford. To which are added the Fasti, or annals of the said university / By Anthony à Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [343] IC07- us, (tho’ others 7 say of the Common Pleas) in the place of sir Christop. Wray deceased, and the same year he received the honour of knighthood from her majesty. While he held that honour¬ able office of L. ch. justice, he administred it to¬ wards malefactors with such wholsome and avail¬ able severity, that England was beholding to him a long time for a part of her private peace and home security. For the truth is, the land in his days did swarm with thieves and robbers, (whose ways and courses he well understood when he was a young man,) some of whom being con¬ demned by him to die, did gain their pardons, not from qu. Elizabeth, but from K. James; which being soon discovered to be prejudicial to justice, and the ministers thereof, this our worthy judge complained to the king of it: whereupon granting of pardons were not so often afterwards issued out.8 His works that are extant are these. Reports and Cases adjudged in the time of Qu. Elizabeth. Lond. 1656, fol. To which are added Remarkable Cases and Reports of other learned Pens since his Death? These Reports were after¬ wards printed again [in folio, 1682. Bodl. C. 8. 15. Jur.] Resolutions and Judgments upon Cases and Mat¬ ters agitated in all Courts at Westminster in the latter end of Qu. Elizabeth. Lond. in qu. col¬ lected by Joh. Goldesburg 1 esq. one of the pro¬ tonotaries of the Common Pleas. At length our author Popham dying on the 10 of June in six¬ teen hundred and seven, aged 76 years, was buried in the South isle of the church at Wellington in Somersetshire: which town he had, for several years before, graced by his habitation. By his last will and test, dated 21 Sept. 1604, and proved 17 June 1608, (wherein he stiles himself chief justice of the Pleas) he makes provision for an hospital to be at Wellington for 6 men and 6 wo¬ men, and for other works of charity. Afterwards was a noble monument erected over his grave ; with a short inscription thereon, wherein he is said 7 Dugdale in Chron. Serie ad^fmem Orig. Jurid. an. 1592, & alii. 8 [Neither did he onely punish malefactors, but provide for them, says Lloyd; for observing that so many suffered and died for none other reason but because they could not live in England, now grown too populous for itself, and breeding more inhabitants than it could keep, he first set up the discovery of New England to maintain and employ those that could not live honestly in the old; being of opinion, that banishment thither would be as well a more lawful, as a more effectual remedy against those extravagancies, the authors whereof judge it more eligible to hang, than to work, to end their days in a moment, than to continue them in pains. Statesmen and Favourites, edit. 1665, p. 536.] 9 [The additional cases to Popham are of no authority. Lord Holt, 1 PeereWill. 17. WorraH’sZazc Catalogue, 1788, i. 248.] as he wrote it himself, Goldesborough. He was author of, 1. Reports, with Directions how to proceed in many intricate Actions. Lond. 1651, 4to. Taken in con¬ junction with Richard Brownlow, who was also a protho- notary of the Pleas. 2. Reports from the 28th to the 43rd year of Elizabeth. Lond. 1653, 1682, 4to.] to have been privy counCellor to qu. Elizabeth and king James. [Aubrey tells us 2 that he was ‘ wont to take a purse ’ himself in his youth, which accounts for Wood’s insinuation. It is said that he did not begin to study the law till he was thirty years old, when being a very strong man he applied day and night without any prejudice to his health. Sir John was the first person, as has been observed, who invented the plan of sending convicts to the plantations, which, says Aubrey, he ‘ stockt out of all the gaoles in England.’ In the year 1600 he was sent, with some others, by the queen, to the earl of Essex, to know the cause of the confluence of so many military men unto his house; the soldiers therein detained him for a time, which some made tantamount to an imprisonment. This, his violent detention, sir John deposed upon his oath at the earl’s tryal; which, says my author,3 11 note the rather for the rarity thereof, that a lord chief justice should be pro¬ duced as witness in open court.’] HENRY LYTE esq. son of John, son of Tho. Lyte, was born of, and descended from, an an¬ cient family of his name living at Lytes-Carey in Somersetshire, became a student of this university in the latter end of Hen. 8, about the year 1546, but in what coll, or hall, I know not as yet, or whether he took a degree, the registers of that time, and in Ed. 6., being very imperfect. After he had spent Some years in logic and philoso¬ phy, 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, as by these books fol¬ lowing it appears, most of which I have seen and perused. Records of the true Original of the noble Britains that sprang of the Remains of the Trojans, taken out of Oblivion's Treasure-MS. The beginning of which is * Isis the principal river of Britain,’ &c. The copy of this that I saw, was written with the author’s own hand very neatly, an. 1592, the cha¬ racter small, lines close, some words in red ink, and others only scored with it. The mystical Oxon. of Oxonford, alias a true and most ancient Record of the Original of Oxford and all Britain. Or rather thus; Certain brief conjectural Notes touching the Original of the Uni¬ versity of Oxon, and also of all Britain called Albania and Calydonia Sylva.—MS. The be- 1 [Letters from the Bodleian Library, with Aubrey's Lives, &c. 1813, vol. ii. page 402.] 3 [Lloyd, Statesmen and Favourites, 1665, p.535. There are Letters from Popham in the Harleian MSS. 286, 6995, 6996 and 6997, dated in 1592, 1593 and 1595: and one t» the lord president in behalf of Justice Saxey, dated May 20, 1600. MS. Lambeth 615, fol. 225. See Todd’s Catalogue qf the Archiepiscopal MSS. folio, 1812, page 119, col. a.] C 2
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