Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/44

 Le Neve actions of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society’ (ii. 23, 111, 369) by G. A. Carthew [q. v.] Three volumes of his letters are in Harl. MSS. 4712–13 and 7525, and there is a great mass of his collections and writings among the Rawlinson MSS. (Oxford).

 LE NEVE, WILLIAM (1600?–1661), herald and genealogist, was the son and heir of William Le Neve of Aslacton, Norfolk, by his first wife, the daughter of John Aldham of Shimpling. His father died in 1609, and he was probably born before 1600. It has been erroneously assumed that he was the William Le Neve, son of Geoffrey Neve of Aslacton, who was educated at Norwich School and Caius College, Cambridge, and was aged 16 in 1624 (Admissions to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 1887). Le Neve was appointed Mowbray herald extraordinary under a warrant dated 24 June 1622 (Ashmolean MS. 857, p. 343); York herald, 25 Nov. 1625; Norroy, December 1633; and Clarenceux, 23 June 1635, having been previously knighted at Whitehall on 23 April 1634. In 1640 he was in correspondence with Sir Christopher Hatton (Hist. MSS. Comm. 1st Rep. p. 26).

In 1642 he is said to have been sent by Charles I, on the day before the battle of Edgehill, to the parliamentary army under the Earl of Essex, ‘with a proclamation of pardon to all such as would lay down their arms; but when he offered to read it aloud, the earl reproved him with much roughness, for obeying which order he was very uneasy ever afterwards.’ His mental powers failing him, he was declared to be a lunatic in October 1658, and Sir Edward Walker (Garter) was empowered to execute his office. Not long after he died at Hoxton, on 15 Aug. 1661, and was buried at St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf. He was not married. In Ashmolean MS. 1113, pp. 225 et seq., there is ‘A Short Account of the Life and Actions of King Edward III, and of his son Edward, Prince of Wales,’ by him.

 LENEY, WILLIAM S. (fl. 1790–1810), engraver, was born in London, and articled to Peltro William Tomkins [q. v.] He practised both in line and stipple, and was employed upon Boydell's great edition of Shakespeare, for which he executed five plates after Fuseli, Downman, W. Miller, J. Graham, and J. Boydell. He also engraved Rubens's ‘Descent from the Cross’ and R. Westall's ‘Going to the Mill.’ About 1806 Leney emigrated to America and settled at New York, where he engraved some small portraits of George Washington, John Adams, Captain Lawrence of the Chesapeake, Robert Fulton, and other Americans of note. In 1812 he entered into partnership with William Rollinson, a bank-note engraver, and having in a few years earned a competency, retired from business and took a farm on the St. Lawrence, near Montreal. There he resided until his death, the date of which is not recorded.

 LENG, JOHN (1665–1727), bishop of Norwich, was born at Thornton le Dale, near Pickering, in Yorkshire, in 1665. He received his early education at St. Paul's School, and obtained an exhibition at Catharine Hall, Cambridge, where he was admitted a sizar 26 March 1683. He graduated B.A. in 1686. His subsequent degrees were M.A. 1690, B.D. 1698, D.D. 1716. He was elected fellow of his college 13 Sept. 1688, and subsequently became a very efficient tutor. He obtained great distinction as a Latin scholar. In 1695 he published the ‘Plutus’ and the ‘Nubes’ of Aristophanes, with a Latin translation, and in 1701 he edited the magnificent Cambridge Terence, adding a dissertation on the metres of the author. He also published a revised edition of Sir Roger L'Estrange's translation of Cicero's ‘Offices.’ At the consecration of the new chapel of his college by Patrick, bishop of Ely, in 1701, he preached the sermon. In 1708 he was presented by his old pupil, Sir Nicholas Carew, to the rectory of Beddington, Surrey, which he held in commendam to his death. In 1717 and 1718 he delivered the Boyle lectures, which were published the following year, his subject being ‘The Natural Obligations to believe the Principles of Religion and Divine Revelation.’ He became chaplain in ordinary to George I, and in 1723 was appointed bishop of Norwich. He was consecrated at Lambeth by Archbishop Wake on 3 Nov. of the same year. He held the see barely three years, having died in London of small-pox, caught at the coronation of George II, 26 Oct. 1727. He was buried in St. Margaret's, Westminster, where a mural tablet was erected to his memory in the south aisle of the chancel (, Hist. of St. Margaret's, p. 19). During his short episcopate Leng had gained the good opinion of his diocese as ‘a man of modesty and 