Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/9

  jurisdiction within the county of Leicester during the suspension of Bishop Williams. On 26 Jan. 1639-40 he was appointed chancellor and keeper of the great seal to Queen Henrietta Maria. He was one of the first to suffer the vengeance of the Long parliament. The parishioners of Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire, whom he had compelled to maintain two organs and an organist at a cost of 15l. a year, petitioned for redress, and on 1 Feb. 1640-1 Lambe was summoned to appear before a committee of the House of Commons to answer the charge. He made default, was sent for 'as a delinquent,' and on 22 Feb. was produced at the bar 'in extremity of sickness both of body and mind.' He made formal submission on 6 March, and was released on bail. At the same time he was harassed by proceedings in the House of Lords by the widow of one of the churchwardens of Colchester, whom he had excommunicated in 1635 for refusing to rail in the altar, and by a certain Walter Walker, whom he had unlawfully deprived of the office of commissary of Leicester. The house found both charges proved, and awarded 100l. to the widow and 1,250l. to Walker. It was even contemplated to impeach him along with Laud (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1640-1, p. 479). He fled to Oxford, where he was incorporated on 9 Dec. 1643. His property was sequestrated (Commons' Journal, iii. 149). He died according to Wood (Fasti Oxon. ii. 58) 'in the beginning of the year 1647.' Lambe had two daughters, both of rare beauty, one of whom married Dr. [q. v.]; the other, Barbara, was second wife of, afterwards earl of Denbigh [q. v.]

 LAMBE, ROBERT (1712–1795), author, the son of John Lambe, mercer, was born at Durham in 1712. He was admitted a sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, 13 April 1728, and graduated B. A. in 1733-4. Taking holy orders, he was successively a minor canon of Durham Cathedral, perpetual curate of South Shields, and from 1747 vicar of Norham in Northumberland. He was of eccentric disposition. Suddenly determining to marry Philadelphia Nelson, the daughter of a Durham carrier, whom he had seen only once, and that many years before, he sent a proposal to her by letter, inviting her to meet him on Berwick pier, and bidding her carry a tea-caddy under her arm for purposes of identification. On the appointed day, owing to his habitual absent-mindedness, he failed to meet her, but the marriage took place on 11 April 1755. He died at Edinburgh in 1795, and was buried in Eyemouth churchyard, Berwick-on-Tweed. His wife had died in 1772. A daughter, Philadelphia, married Alexander Robertson of Prenderguest in Berwickshire; two sons died young.

Lambe wrote 'The History of Chess,' London, 1764; another edition, 1765. His chief work, however, was 'An Exact and Circumstantial History of the Battle of Flodden, in verse, written about the time of Queen Elizabeth,' Berwick, 1774, 8vo; Newcastle, 1809, 8vo. This is said to be published from a manuscript in the possession of John Askew of Pallingsburn, Northumberland; the notes, especially those on etymology, are numerous and very curious. Lambe was also the author of the ballad 'The Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh,' which Hutchinson thought ancient, and inserted in his 'History of Northumberland.' Percy, in the preface to his 'Reliques,' mentions Lambe as one who had been of service to him.

 LAMBE or LAMB, THOMAS (d. 1686), philanthropist, and sometime nonconformist, was born in Colchester. He could not have been, as Brook thinks possible, the Thomas Lamb who became vicar of South Benfleet, Essex, on 23 July 1641. On 6 Feb. 1640, when he was already married and had eight children, he was brought up, at Laud's instance, to the Star-chamber from Colchester, with Francis Lee, on a charge of preaching to a separatist congregation there, and on suspicion of having administered the sacraments. He was committed to the Fleet, and suffered several imprisonments. At Whitsuntide 1640 he and another gave information to John Langley, mayor of Colchester, of a suspected plot to fire the town by 'two Irishmen.' He gained his liberty, through his wife's intercession, on 25 June 1640, on giving a bond not to preach, baptise, or frequent any conventicle. He was brought up on his bond by order of 15 Oct. 1640, but seems to have been finally released by the Long parliament 