Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/148

 1540. This treatise, bound up with two by John Frith [q. v.], was found in a cod's belly in Cambridge market in 1626, and was reprinted in that year by Boler and Milbourne. Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) [q. v.], who was at Cambridge at the time, describes the excitement caused by the incident (Worthies, 1840, i. 562;, Letters, Nos. 100, 101; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ii. 106–7).

[Besides authorities quoted see Harl. MS. 1041; Lansd. MS. 979, f. 96; Visitation of Gloucestershire, 1623, pp. 165–7; Lists of Sheriffs, 1898; Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, ii. 388–9; Britton's Toddington, 1840; Strype's Works (general index); Gough's Index to Parker Society's Publications; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 245; Burnet's Reformation, ed. Pocock; Foxe's Actes and Mon.; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Dixon's Hist. of the Church of England, i. 115, 403; Official Returns of Members of Parl.]  TRACY, ROBERT (1655–1735), judge, born in 1655 at Toddington in Gloucestershire, was the eldest son of Robert Tracy, second viscount and baron Tracy of Rathcoole, by his second wife, Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Cocks of Castleditch, Herefordshire [see under ]. Robert's paternal grandmother, Anne, was daughter of Sir Thomas Shirley [q. v.] of Wiston, Sussex. He matriculated from Oriel College, Oxford, on 29 Oct. 1672, and entered at the Middle Temple in the following year. He was called to the bar in 1680, and in July 1699 was appointed a judge of the king's bench in Ireland (, Brief Hist. Relation, 1857, iv. 536). In the following year he was transferred to England on 14 Nov. as a baron of the exchequer (ib. iv. 702, 707, 709, v. 49, 183, 184), and in Trinity term 1702 he was removed to the court of common pleas. He was appointed a commissioner of the great seal while the lord-chancellor's office was vacant from 24 Sept. to 19 Oct. 1710 and from 15 April to 12 May 1718 (ib. vi. 633). He was one of the judges who gave an opinion on Sacheverell's trial, and in 1716 took part in trying the Jacobites at Carlisle. On 26 Oct. 1726 he retired from the bench with a pension of 1,500l., and died at his seat at Coscomb in Gloucestershire on 11 Sept. 1735. By his wife Anne, daughter of William Dowdeswell of Pull Court, Worcestershire, he left three sons—Robert, Richard, and William—and two daughters—Anne and Dorothy. Dorothy married John Pratt, fourth son of Sir John Pratt (1657–1725) [q. v.], chief justice of the king's bench.

Tracy is described as ‘a complete gentleman and a good lawyer, of a clear head and an honest heart,’ and as delivering his opinion with such ‘genteel affability and integrity that even those who lost a cause were charmed with his behaviour.’

[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Shadwell's Registrum Orielense, p. 338; Foss's Judges of England, viii. 62–3; Gent. Mag. 1835, p. 559; Britton's Toddington, 1840, App. pp. iii, v; Stowe MS. 750, ff. 226, 230.]  TRACY, WILLIAM (d. 1173), murderer of Thomas (Becket) [q. v.], belonged to a family which in the twelfth century held considerable property in Devonshire and Gloucestershire; but his place in the pedigree has never been ascertained. The version given in Britton's ‘Toddington,’ and generally accepted by later writers, has no evidence to support it; Dugdale is more wisely content to leave the matter undetermined. ‘William de Tracy’ witnessed an agreement between Henry II and the Count of Flanders in 1163 (, i. 23; Liber Niger, i. 35), and figures also in the ‘Liber Niger’ (pp. 115, 121, 168; cf. Red Book, pp. 248, 254, 295) and in the pipe rolls of 1165, 1168, 1169, 1172, and 1173 (Pipe Roll, 11 Hen. II p. 80, 14 Hen. II p. 128, 15 Hen. II p. 53, 18 Hen. II p. 102, 19 Hen. II p. 148); but there were evidently living during this period at least two men who bore the name, and it is impossible to distinguish with certainty between them, or to decide which of them is to be identified with the subject of this article.

This last is described by a contemporary as ‘one who, though he had borne himself bravely in many a fight, yet in his manner of life was such that his sins must needs drag him down in the end to the lowest depths of crime’ (Materials for Hist. of Becket, i. 129). He had been the ‘man’ of Thomas when the latter was chancellor (ib. iii. 135), and was one of the four conspirators who, on Christmas-eve 1170, vowed to slay him. When they entered the archbishop's chamber on the afternoon of Tuesday, 29 Dec., Tracy was the only one whom Thomas greeted by name (ib. iv. 70). When they came to the church an hour later to slay him, Tracy first, according to the Thomas Saga (i. 539), ‘strideth forward to the archbishop, saying, “Flee! thou art death's man;”’ then, as Thomas refused to flee, ‘the knight seizeth the mantle with one hand, and with the other smiteth the mitre from the archbishop's head, saying, “Go hence, thou art a prisoner; it is not to be endured that thou shouldest live any longer.”’ William of Canterbury, however, who is probably a better authority, ascribes this action to Reginald Fitzurse 