Lingard, John

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

John (1771-1851), an English historian. He was educated for the priesthood at the English university at Douay, France, and had charge of a Roman Catholic parish at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was a man of scholarship and loyalty to the British crown. He declined a cardinal's hat from the pope, and accepted a pension of $1,500 a year from Queen Victoria. His first published work of importance was Catholic Loyalty Vindicated. This appeared in 1805, and was followed by Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The work on which his reputation rests chiefly is a History of England from the Invasion of the Romans to the Year 1688. It appeared in 1819-30 in eight volumes. Many subsequent editions have been published. This work was a revelation to the reading public, long accustomed to English history written from a Protestant and partisan point of view. It has the reputation of being a clear and, for the time, impartial and accurate presentation of the Catholic side of a long controversy. Protestant readers were surprised that so much could be said on the side of the Catholics. This work had a powerful influence in leading historians to examine both sides of a question before writing. For instance, Lingard taught the people of England that the monasteries suppressed by the Reformation were something more than nests of iniquity occupied by lazy drones. He showed that they were centers of learning and hospitality as well, and that they were the chief maintainers of hospitals in which the sick, regardless of religious creed, might obtain proper care and medical attendance. He demonstrated that, in the destruction of English monasteries, crafty politicians and hungry court hangers-on, desirous of rich lands and livings, were not actuated wholly by zeal for a pure religious belief. See Froude ; Hallam ; Macaulay