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 College, to which he is said to have made various benefactions. He lived in a small house in St. Giles's, where he died on 12 Aug. 1813, having been principal librarian at the Bodleian for forty-five years; he was buried at Wilcote, where a mural tablet was erected to his memory in the chancel; a portrait engraved by Swaine, after a sketch taken by the Rev. Henry Hervey Baber in 1798, is given in Nichols's ‘Illustrations of Literary History,’ v. 514.

Price's only publications were: ‘A short Account of Holyhead,’ contributed to Nichols's ‘Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica’ (vol. v. 1790, 4to); and ‘An Account of a Bronze Image of Roman Workmanship,’ &c., published in ‘Archæologia,’ vii. 405–7. Numerous letters from him to Gough, Nichols, Herbert, and Bishop Percy are printed in Nichols's ‘Illustrations of Literary History;’ and he kept a notebook which is frequently quoted in Macray's ‘Annals of the Bodleian Library.’ He was an intimate friend of Warton. [q. v.] in his edition of Warton's works acknowledged obligations to him, and he assisted [q. v.] in the publication of the ‘Lives of Leland, Wood, and Hearne,’ 1772. He was godfather to [q. v.], whom in 1810 he appointed sub-librarian at the Bodleian Library. Anna Seward [q. v.] dedicated vol. iv. of her ‘Anecdotes’ to Price in 1796.



PRICE, LAURENCE (fl. 1628–1680?), writer of ballads and political squibs, was a native of London, who compiled between 1625 and 1680 numberless ballads, pamphlets, and broadsides in verse on political or social subjects. During the civil wars he seems to have occasionally been a hanger-on of the parliamentary army, and published his observations (cf. Strange Predictions related at Catericke, 1648, and Englands unhappy Changes, 1648). He adapted his views to the times, and the godly puritan strain which he affected during the Commonwealth gave place to the utmost indecency after the Restoration. The fact that he published much anonymously, under the initials ‘L. P.,’ renders it difficult to identify his work. Many of his publications are lost; and the sixty-eight that are extant are all rare. Specimens of them may be found in the Thomasson collection of tracts at the British Museum, in the Pepysian collection at Magdalene College, Cambridge, or in the Roxburghe and Bagford collections of ballads at the British Museum. Most of the latter have been reprinted by the Ballad Society.

The earliest known ballad by Price is ‘Oh, Gramercy Penny, being a Lancashire Ditty, and chiefly pen'd to prove that a Penny's a Man's best Friend,’ London, printed by widow Trundle about 1625 (in the Pepys collection). Some of the titles of later ballads run: ‘The Bachelor's Feast’ (1635?), ‘The Young Man's Wish’ (1635?), ‘The Merry Conceited Lasse’ (1640?), ‘Cupid's Wanton Wiles’ (1640?), ‘The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Wentworth [i.e. Strafford]’ (1641), ‘Good Ale for my Money’ (1645?), ‘The Merry Man's Resolution,’ 1655, ‘The True Lovers' Holidaies’ (1655?), ‘The Famous Woman Drummer’ (1660?), and ‘Win at first, lose at last,’ celebrating the Restoration of 1660.

Price's prose pamphlets include: ‘Great Britaines Time of Triumph,’ on Charles I's visit to the city (1641); ‘A New Disputation between the two lordly Bishops of York and Canterbury’ (1642); ‘England's unhappy Changes,’ an appeal for peace (1648); ‘The Shepherd's Prognostication foretelling the Sad and Strange Eclipse of the Sun [on 29 March 1652]’ (1652); ‘The Astrologers Buggbeare,’ 1652; ‘Bloody Actions performed,’ an account of three murders—two by husbands of their wives (1653); ‘A Ready Way to prevent Sudden Death,’ 1655; ‘A Mass of Merry Conceites,’ 1656; ‘Make Roome for Christmas,’ 1657 (cf. Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ii. 549, iii. 185); ‘Fortune's Lottery, or a Book of News,’ 1657; ‘The Vertuous Wife is the Glory of her Husband,’ 1667; ‘The Famous History of Valentine and Orson,’ London, 1673; ‘Witty William of Wiltshire, his Birth, Life, and Education, and Strange Adventures,’ 1674, 12mo; ‘The Five Strange Wonders of the World,’ 1674; ‘A Variety of New Merry Riddles,’ 1684.



PRICE, OWEN (d. 1671), schoolmaster and author, was a native of Montgomeryshire, of humble birth. He was appointed a scholar of Jesus College, Oxford, by the parliamentary visitors on 12 Oct. 1648, and matriculated on 12 March following. Four years later he became master of a public school in Wales, ‘where he took pains,’ says Wood, ‘to imbue his pupils with presbyterian prin-