Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/126

 of Dublin, an office which he held till he died, though from 1871 he ceased to discharge its duties, except by his deputy, N. Ritchie, Q.C. He was esteemed an especially learned real-property lawyer. In 1842 he became a queen's counsel, and in 1859 a bencher of the King's Inns. Upon the passing of the Incumbered Estates Act in 1849 he was appointed one of the three commissioners under it, and he held that office until the landed estates court was constituted in 1858, when he became a judge of that court, and continued to sit until 1867. He was an active liberal, and assisted to draft the Irish measures of the first and second Gladstone administrations. In 1867 he was sworn a member of the Irish privy council. He was appointed a commissioner of Irish national education in 1853, and on several occasions was an assessor to the general synod of the Irish church, and with Professor Galbraith principally arranged the scheme for the church's finance. He was an active member of the Social Science Congress and the Statistical Society. He died at 47 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, on 21 Nov. 1884. In 1845 he married Elizabeth Penelope, daughter of Andrew Armstrong. 

LONGLAND, JOHN (1473–1547), bishop of Lincoln, was born in 1473 at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. His mother is described as Isabell Staveley of Burcester in the same county. Entering as a demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, and graduating in due course in arts, he became a fellow, and in 1505 was made principal of Magdalen Hall. He had previously (15 April 1500) been ordained priest, and presented (29 Jan. 1504) to the rectory of Woodham Ferrers, near Great Baddow in Essex. He resigned this preferment in 1517, Dr. Metcalfe being appointed (13 July) as his successor. In 1511 he was made doctor of divinity, having a reputation, as we are told, for hard study and devotion. In 1514 he became dean of Salisbury, and prebendary of North Kelsey, Lincoln, towards the latter end of the same year. His next preferment was to a canonry at Windsor (11 April 1519), and, growing ‘in great favour with the king for his excellent way of preaching,’ he was made confessor to Henry VIII, and in 1521 lord almoner. On 5 May in the same year he was consecrated bishop of Lincoln.

In the administration of his see he was active and vigilant, strenuously asserting the rights and privileges of the church. Many letters from him to Cromwell and others are extant, in which he defends his title to presentations and the like (, Letters and Papers, ix. 349, 453–4, 471, &c.) In February 1527 he gave a monition from Cromwell to the clergy of his diocese, requiring them to preach in person, or provide sermons to be preached by others, four times a year (, Collections, iv. 64 vers.) As a repressor of what he considered heresy he was undoubtedly severe. In October 1531 he granted a commission to John London [q. v.], John Higden, and others to search booksellers' stalls at Oxford for heretical books (ib. xlv. 93). While sternly repressing new doctrines, he was a staunch supporter of the royal supremacy, and, though he afterwards bitterly repented it, of the king's divorce.

At the beginning of Michaelmas term 1532 he was made chancellor of the university of Oxford, an office which he retained till his death. He is reported to have been a good friend to the university, upholding its privileges and lending help to poor scholars. At Oxford he was instrumental in obtaining decisions in favour of the king's divorce, but was pelted with stones there, along with Dr. Bell and Dr. Fox (, Hist. of Oxford, p. 474, quoting Cal. State Papers, Spanish, iv. 475). The same unpopularity attended him in the north. Marshall lamented to Cromwell that ‘poor people be indicted for small matters of pretended heresy, as by the Bishop of Lincoln in his diocese’ (, Letters and Papers, xi. 325); while, on the other hand, we read of seven convicts at a time escaping in 1536 from his prison at Banbury (ib. x. 1266). The northern rebels in the autumn of this year, in their articles addressed to the king, ‘are grieved that there are bishops of the king's late promotion who have subverted the faith of Christ. … (They) think the beginning of all this trouble was the Bishop of Lincoln’ (ib. xi. 705). As an upholder of the royal supremacy he had issued strict injunctions to his clergy the year before (19 June 1535) to maintain and teach the king's supremacy, and to expunge from their public offices all mention of the name or authority of the pope of Rome (Reg. Longl. p. 192, quoted by Kennett). The same principles appear in his two vigorous and racy ‘Sermondes,’ preached in English before the court on the Good Friday of 1536 and 1538 respectively. Both were printed in the year of their delivery—the later one by Thomas Petyt, and a copy of it is at Lambeth. Longland's treatment of heretics, as for instance of Clark, who died in prison (cf., Letters and Papers, iv. 1783), was a stain upon his character. But it is unjust to describe him on this account