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 of the army in Ireland, and governor of Limerick and of the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, on 17 May 1804, aged 85.

Massey married Catherine, sister of Robert Clements, first earl of Leitrim, by whom he had four children. Two of his successors in the title—his second and only surviving son, Nathaniel William, second baron, who died a major-general on the staff in the West Indies in 1810, and his great-grandson, the present and fourth baron, who served in the 95th regiment in the Crimea and the Indian mutiny—have risen to general's rank.



MASSEY, JOHN (1651?–1715), catholic divine, born about 1651, was son (according to the entry in the Oxford matriculation register) of John Massey, ' pleb.,' of Bristol, Somerset. His father is said to have been a presbyterian minister, at one time settled in Wiltshire. Becoming clerk at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1666, he matriculated there on 26 Nov. 1669, at the age of eighteen, and graduated B. A. from Magdalen Hall in 1673. Meanwhile in 1672 he was elected a fellow of Merton, proceeded M.A. on 29 Jan. 1675-1676, and was senior proctor in 1684. After the accession of James II he became a Roman catholic. Dodd states that for several years he had 'entertained some thoughts that way, by the instructions he received under' Obadiah Walker, master of University College. Walker's influence, or that of Philip Ellis (see Ellis Correspondence), secured him in October 1686 the deanery of Christ Church, which had been vacant since Fell's death in June, and of which Aldrich and Parker had had expectations. Burnet asserts that Massey 'had neither the gravity, the learning, nor the age that was suitable to such a dignity,' and Macaulay is equally depreciatory; but Dodd describes him as 'well skilled in the classics, and much esteemed for his talent in preaching.' It is expressly stated in the king's letter granting him a dispensation from the oaths that he had not taken priest's orders. He fitted up a catholic chapel in Canterbury quadrangle, and James heard mass in it when staying at the deanery in September 1687. Massey, like Walker, was appointed a magistrate for Oxfordshire, and there was talk, according to Luttrell, of a mandamus being sent to the university to make him a D.D. Had this idea been carried out, he would have been not merely the first deacon dean, but the first deacon D.D. He was one of the six founders of the Oxford Chemical Society in 1683, and he is styled 'mon bon ami' by the scholarly Abbé de Longuerue, to whom, in proof of the perfidy of James's ministers, he related a curious story of his receiving what falsely purported to be a royal order, countersigned by Sunderland, for the expulsion of the eighty students of Christ Church, unless they embraced Romanism. Massey says he went up to London to remonstrate, whereupon James disclaimed all knowledge of the order, and commended him for not obeying it.

After the arrival of William III in England Massey left Oxford for London before daybreak on 30 Nov. 1688, in company with Thomas Deane, a fellow of University, who had also become a catholic, and secretly embarked for France. He repaired to St. Germain, was admitted on 17 Sept. 1692 as a student at Douay, was ordained priest, and returning to Paris, resided in the Oratorian seminary of St. Magloire till 1696, when he became chaplain to the English Conceptionist nunnery, or the convent of Blue Nuns, in Paris. In this obscure post he remained till his death on 11 Aug. 1715.



MASSEY, WILLIAM (1691–1764?), miscellaneous writer and translator, born in January 1691 of quaker parents, learnt Latin, Greek, and French at a private grammar school kept by William Thompson at Nottingham, and afterwards took lessons in Hebrew from one Knobs, clerk of the parish of St. Gregory, Norwich. In 1712 he became Latin usher in a boarding-school at Half-farthing-house, Wandsworth, Surrey, kept by Richard Scoryer, after whose death in 1714 he continued in the same employment for about a year under Scoryer's successor, Edward Powell, a noted writing-master and accountant. Subsequently he conducted a boarding-school of his own for many years at Wandsworth, and it was much patronised by the Society of Friends. Dr. Birch notes that on 24 March 1764 Massey was seized with the dead palsy on his right side, and under date 28 Aug. following he adds: 'I visited him at his house on Cambridge Heath, near Hackney, and found him very