Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/227

Rh heavy recognisances not to print any ‘seditious or unlicensed books’ (ib. Dom. 1649–50, p. 524). He died in 1657. Lichfield ends a volume of Oxford poems addressed to Queen Henrietta Maria, entitled ‘Musarum Oxoniensium Charisteria’ (1638), with a few verses entitled ‘The Printer's Close,’ to which his name is subscribed. The lines, which may have been supplied by one of his university friends, are reprinted in Brydges's ‘Restituta,’ i. 147–8.

By his wife Ann (d. 1671) he had a son, Leonard, who carried on the business. When Charles II and his court removed from London to Oxford in order to escape the plague in November 1665, Lichfield was licensed by Arlington to print ‘The Oxford Gazette,’ a folio half sheet, containing the government's official notices—the earliest English periodical of the kind. It appeared bi-weekly from 14 Nov. 1665 till the end of January 1665–6, when on the return of the court to London the publication was continued there as ‘The London Gazette’ (, Lit. Anecdotes, iv. 58). Lichfield in December 1679 was a candidate for the yeoman bedelship (, Life, ed. Bliss, p. lxxxvii); he died 22 Feb. 1685–6, and was succeeded by his son Leonard (fl. 1711).

Another of John Lichfield's sons was Solodell Lichfield, who was elected sub-bedell of law 22 Jan. 1634–5; was ejected by the parliamentary visitors in 1648; was restored in 1660, and was chosen yeoman bedell on Edmund Gayton's death in 1666. According to Wood he kept a public inn at Oxford, ‘and was good for nothing but for eating, drinking, smoaking, and punning’ (, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 758;, Life and Times, Oxf. Hist. Soc., i. 76, ii. 95, 218, 474, cf. iii. 180). At his death in 1671 he was one of the superior bedells. 

LICHFIELD, WILLIAM, D.D. (d. 1447), divine and poet, was doctor of divinity of Oxford according to Pits and Wood (MSS.), of Cambridge according to Gascoigne. In his dictionary (Loci e libro veritatum, ed. Thorold Rogers, sub voce ‘Prædicator’) Gascoigne enumerates Lichfield among the most famous preachers of his time. He left behind him at his death no fewer than 3,083 sermons, written in English with his own hand, besides a collection of materials for sermons, entitled ‘Mille Exempla,’ of which there was once a manuscript in Syon Abbey. He wrote also in verse ‘The Complaynt of God to Sinful Man and the Answer of Man,’ and a ‘Dialogue, “of the Passion,” between God and the Penitent Soul’ (both extant in MS. 174, Gonville and Caius Coll. Cambr. ff. 469–82).

Lichfield was rector of the church of All Hallows the Great, London, but the date of his admission thereto does not appear. His predecessor was admitted in 1397 (, Repertorium Paroch. Londin. i. 248). Lichfield died 24 Oct. 1448, and was buried under the communion table of his church, ‘having a fair plated stone laid over him,’ with a long inscription in rhyming Latin verse (, Survey of London, book ii. 205, ed. 1720). 

LIDDEL, DUNCAN (1561–1613), mathematician and physician, born in 1561, was a native of Aberdeen. Having received an education in languages and philosophy at the school and university of that town, he went abroad at the age of eighteen to seek his fortune. After a few months' wandering he arrived at Frankfort-on-Oder, where a Scotchman, John Craig (d. 1620) [q. v.], was engaged in teaching logic and mathematics. Craig received him kindly and superintended his studies. Three years later Craig returned to Scotland, and Liddel, by his advice, removed to the university either of Wratislaw or Breslau in Silesia, where he studied mathematics under Paulus Wittichius. In 1584 he returned to Frankfort, took pupils in mathematics and philosophy, and applied himself to the study of physic. In 1587 an epidemic drove him to Rostock, where he became the friend of Caselius and Brucæus, and received the degree of master in philosophy. He had hardly returned to Frankfort once more in 1590 when he was persuaded to attach himself to the new university of Helmstadt, established by Duke Julius of Brunswick. Caselius had already been appointed to the chair of philosophy there. Next year Liddel obtained the lower mathematical chair vacated by Parcovius, and in 1594 he succeeded Erhardus Hoffmann in the higher mathematical chair. In 1596 he became M.D. of the university, and began publicly to teach physic and to act as præses at the recitation of medical dissertations. In 1599 he was dean of the faculty of philosophy; in 1603 he resigned his mathematical professorship, and in 1604 became pro-rector of the university. Three years later he returned to Scotland with a competent fortune. In 1612 he endowed the university of Aberdeen with lands for the education and support of six poor scholars,