Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/298

 prove the superior antiquity of the university of Cambridge to that of Oxford. Concerning the rest of the activity of Felix we do not know much. He was helped by the coming of an Irish monk Fursey, who introduced monastic life, of which Sigebert was so smitten that he resigned his crown to enter a monastery. Under his successor Egric East Anglia was invaded by the heathen Penda; but in spite of this disaster the progress of Christianity in East Anglia was zealously furthered by the next king, Anna, and Felix ended his days in peace.

Felix was counted as an English saint, and his festival was fixed on 8 March. Tradition connects Felix with the monastery of Ely, which was founded by King Anna's daughter, Etheldreda, but not till 673. According to the ‘Liber Eliensis,’ Felix founded a monastery at Soham, near Ely, and thither his remains were translated a few years after his death; thence, during the time of the Danish invasions, they were transferred to Ramsey. Churches were dedicated to him, and his name remains in Felixstowe in Suffolk and Feliskirk in Yorkshire.

 FELIX, JOHN (fl. 1498), a Benedictine monk, belonging to St. Peter's Monastery, Westminster, lived about the middle of the reign of Henry VII; the only record of him that remains is a short manuscript life he wrote of John Estney, abbot of Westminster, 1474–98, and some doggerel Latin verses upon the same abbot, setting forth his benefactions to the church of Westminster.

 FELL, CHARLES, D.D. (1687–1763), catholic divine, born in England in 1687, was of French extraction, his real name being Umfreville. After studying philosophy and divinity at the communauté of Monsieur Duvieux he was sent to St. Gregory's seminary at Paris in 1706. In the following year he went to Douay to learn English and to complete his course of school divinity. In 1709 he returned to Paris, and in 1713 was ordained priest. He was created D.D. in 1716. After coming on the English mission he resided principally in London, where he devoted his leisure time to the compilation of ‘The Lives of Saints; collected from Authentick Records of Church History. With a full Account of the other Festivals throughout the year. To which is prefixed a Treatise on the Moveable Feasts and Fasts of the Church’ (anon.), 4 vols. London, 1729, 4to; 2nd edit. 4 vols. London, 1750, 4to. Dr. Robert Witham of Douay wrote observations on this work, and denounced it at Rome, his principal complaint being that Fell had taken his ‘Lives’ chiefly from Bachlet, and had recorded few miracles. Witham's manuscript was formerly in the library of the English College at Rome. The publication of the ‘Lives’ involved Fell in such pecuniary difficulties that when he was required to give a statement of his accounts of the clergy property, for which he was the administrator in London, he was found to owe 1,272l. Of this sum he was unable to pay more than tenpence in the pound in 1731. In the following year his irregular election as a member of the chapter gave rise to much contention, and to some publications. The case was decided against him on appeal. He died in Gray's Inn on 22 Oct. 1763.

 FELL, HENRY (fl. 1672), quaker, was a member of one of the numerous Lancashire families bearing his surname. The first mention of him is in 1656 as suffering much from the magistrates in Essex, and in the same year he went as a missionary to the West Indies, where he remained about a year. After his return to England he was engaged as a travelling preacher, and is referred to by his contemporaries as having been eloquent and successful. In 1659 he was seriously illtreated by some soldiers near Westminster Hall, and in 1660 Richard Hubberthorne, the quaker, represented to Charles II that at Thetford, Norfolk, Fell had been hauled out of a meeting, and, after being whipped, turned out of the town, and passed as a vagabond from parish to parish to Lancashire. In a letter to Margaret Fell (Swarthmore MSS.) Fell states that he was imprisoned for some time at Thetford. He was in London during the rising of the Fifth-monarchy men in this year, and was knocked down by the soldiers as a rioter, and Fox (Journal, p. 314, ed. 1765) says he would have been killed but for the interposition of the Duke of York. In 1661 he was ‘moved,’ in company with John Stubbs, to promulgate his views in ‘foreign parts, especially to Prester John's country and China.’ As no shipmasters would carry them, the quakers got a warrant from the king, which the East India Company found means to avoid. They then went to Holland, and, being unable to