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Laski promote a union between the Lutherans and his own party. He proceeded to Poland in December 1556. In February 1557, in company with Utenhovius, he went from Cracow to Wilna, where the king received him kindly and made him his secretary. Calvin wrote of Laski at this time that the only danger was that he might fail through too great an austerity (, Calvin, ed. Stebbing, ii. 348). He preached regularly (Zurich Letters, iii. 600, 687–90), and took an active part in the synods of Ivanovitze in 1557 and Pinczow in 1558 (cf., Anti-Trinitarian Biog. vol. ii. passim). He was one of the eighteen divines whose version of the Bible in Polish appeared in 1563. In March 1558 he left with Utenhovius for Prussia, but returned in October. He had the general superintendence of the reformed churches in Little Poland, a charge of great difficulty. Laski's object continued to be the union of the reformed churches, but as in London and Frankfort he found union impossible, although he prepared the way for the subsequent compromise at Sandomir. He died, after many months' illness, at Calish in Poland 13 Jan. 1560. His widow was left in poor circumstances. Laski married his first wife in 1539 at Louvain. She died in London in 1552. By her he seems to have had three sons, John, Jerome, and a third who died young, with a daughter, Barbara Ludovica. His second wife was Catherine, whom he married in London in August 1552. By her he had five children, of whom Samuel was a distinguished soldier. The Laski family afterwards became Roman catholic again. Albertus Laski, palatine of Siradz in Bohemia, probably a nephew of the reformer, visited England in 1583, and nearly ruined himself by searching for the philosopher's stone in partnership with John Dee [q.v.] and Edward Kelley [q.v.] (cf. Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. x. 332).

There is a full and careful account of Laski's writings, both published and in manuscript, in Kuyper's 'Joh. a Lasco Opera Omnia' (Amsterdam, 1866, 2 vols. 8vo). Those which relate to his connection with England are: 1. 'Epistola Joannis à Lasco ... continens in se Summam Controversiæ de Cœna Domini breviter explicatam,' London, 1551, written in 1545. There is a copy of this work in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. 2. 'Compendium Doctrinæ de vera unicaque Dei et Christi Ecclesia ... in qua Peregrinorum Ecclesia Londini instituta est ...,' London, Latin and Dutch, 1551; 2nd edit., Dutch version, 1553; 3rd edit., Dutch version, much altered, Emden, 1565. A copy of the first edition is preserved at Dublin, of the third at Utrecht. 3. 'Catechismus Emdanus major,' drawn up 1546, published London, 1551, Dutch and Latin preface by Utenhovius; other editions. 4. 'Brevis et dilucida de Sacramentis Ecclesiæ Christi Tractatio ...,' London, 1552; copy in the British Museum. 5. 'Brevis Fidei Exploratio,' written about 1550; editions published in 1553 (Dutch) and (with slightly varied title) 1558; a copy of the 1558 edition at Amsterdam. It appeared in Latin, London, 1555. 6. 'Forma ac Ratio tota Ecclesiastici Ministerii Edwardi VI, in Peregrinorum ... Ecclesia instituta Londini in Anglia ...,' the liturgy of the church in Austin Friars, printed for church use only in 1551, and later as a justification of Laski's methods, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, 1555; copies of the latter are in the British Museum, Trinity College, Dublin, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

[Authorities quoted; Dalton's John à Lasco, trans. by Mr. J. Evans, for early life; Hessel's Ecclesiæ Londino-Batavæ Arch., passim; Moens's Reg. of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars; Krasinski's Sketch of the Reformation in Poland, i. chap. v., and Sketch of the Religious Hist. of the Slavonic Nations, chap. vii.; Herminjard's Corresp. des Réformateurs dans les pays de la langue Française; Dixon's Hist. of the Church of England, ii. 522, iii. 98, &c., iv. 43; Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. ii. 26; Schaff's Hist. of the Creeds, i. 565, 583; Lit. Remains of Edw. VI (Roxb. Club), pp. 48, &c.; Adrian Regenvolscius's (Andreas Wengierski) Systema Historico-Chronologicum, p. 409, &c.; Dan. Gerdes's Florilegium Historico-Criticum, ed. 1640, 8vo (list of works), and Hist. Reformationis, iii. 145, &c.; Erasmus's Letters, ed. 1642, pp. 779, &c., 794, 828, 831, 835, 1984; Kuyper's edition of Laski's Works.]  LASSELL, WILLIAM (1799–1880), astronomer, was born at Bolton in Lancashire on 18 June 1799. At the age of four or five he amused himself by polishing lenses. After his father's death from fever in 1810 he was sent to school at Rochdale for eighteen months, was apprentice from 1814 to 1821 in a merchant's office in Liverpool, and set up in business as a brewer about 1825. In 1820 he began to construct reflecting telescopes, being too poor to buy them. A nine-inch Newtonian erected by him at Starfield, near Liverpool, where he built an observatory in 1840 (Memoirs Royal Astronomical Soc. xii. 265), was virtually the first example of the adaptation to reflectors of the equatoreal plan of mounting. With it he observed the solar eclipse of 8 July 1842 (ib. xv. 91), Faye's, d'Arrest's, Mauvais's second, Vico's first and second comets in 1843–5, following them further than was possible at any