Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/234

 contain, besides the paraphrase and annotations, many discourses on various subjects connected with the Holy Scriptures. A detailed description of these discourses is given in Dr. Henry Cotton's list of editions of the Bible.

[Atterbury's Correspondence, i. 121; Bodleian Cat.; Brüggemann's English Editions of Greek and Latin Authors, p. 253; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Hearne's Remarks and Collections (Doble), i. 230; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, iv. 21; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. Bohn; Nichols's Leicestershire, iv. 150; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vii. 458; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Welch's Alumni Westmon. ed. Phillimore, pp. 115, 185, 205; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 668; Fasti, ii. 409, and Life of Wood, p. 119.]  WELLS, HENRY LAKE (1850–1898), lieutenant-colonel of royal engineers, son of Thomas Bury Wells, rector of Portlemouth, Devonshire, was born on 8 March 1850. He received a commission as lieutenant in the royal engineers on 2 Aug. 1871, and attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel on 6 Nov. 1896. He was specially employed in the war office in 1873 and 1874, and went to India in 1875.

He served in the Afghan campaign of 1878–9, raised a corps of Ghilzai labourers and constructed a road across the Khojak, and was for some time in sole charge of the public works department at Quetta, where he built the native cantonments. He commanded detachments of Punjab cavalry and Sind horse in an engagement near the Khojak, where he was wounded. He accompanied General Biddulph's force down the Thal Chotiali route, took part in the action at Baghao, served with the Khaibar line force, was present at the action of Majina, and had charge of the positions at the crossing of the Kabul river. He was five times mentioned in despatches, Sir Donald Stewart recommending him to notice ‘for conspicuous gallantry and bravery displayed on the occasion of the attack on a robber encampment under Laskar Khan by a party from the Chamun post.’

He surveyed routes in 1879–80 in Kashmir and Gilgit for a line of telegraph, and in the latter year was appointed to the government Indo-European telegraph in Persia as assistant director. During many years spent in Persia he surveyed routes between Dizful and Shiraz, and contributed papers to the Royal Geographical Society, the Society of Arts and other learned societies, and to the professional papers of his own corps. He was repeatedly thanked for his services, especially for those rendered in the delimitation of the Afghan frontier in 1886, the army remount operations for India in 1887, in the cholera epidemic, and during the revolution in Shiraz in 1893.

Wells became director of the Persian telegraph in 1891. He was presented by the shah, Nasr-ud-Din, with a sword of honour, and by the present shah, Muraffer, with a diamond ring, and on 1 Jan. 1897 he was made a companion of the order of the Indian Empire. He died suddenly at Karachi on 31 Aug. 1898. Wells married, on 15 Jan. 1885, in London, Alice Bertha, daughter of the Rev. Hugh Bacon.

[Royal Engineers Records; Despatches; Proceedings and Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1898; Royal Engineers' Journal, October and December 1898; Times (London) September 1898.]  WELLS, HUGH (d. 1235), bishop of Lincoln. [See .]

WELLS, JOCELYN (d. 1242), bishop of Bath and Wells. [See .]

WELLS, JOHN (d. 1388), opponent of Wycliffe, was a Benedictine monk of Ramsey, who studied at Gloucester College, Oxford, the Benedictine establishment to which most of the great houses of that order in the southern province sent their more studious members to receive a learned education. There he proceeded doctor of divinity, apparently in 1377. He was for thirteen years ‘prior studentum’—that is, head of Gloucester College. Wells became conspicuous as a bitter opponent of Wycliffe, when the reformer published in the university his attacks on the monastic ideal of life and his denunciation of all ‘religiones privatæ.’ Several passages in Wycliffe's Latin works seem to be drawn up in answer to Wells's defence of the monastic life. The chief of these are ‘Sermonum tertia pars, Sermo xxx’ (Sermones, ed. Loserth, iii. 246–248, 251–7, Wyclif Soc.) and Sermo xxix (ib. iii. 230–9). The latter argument is verbally repeated in Wycliffe's so-called second treatise ‘De Religione Privata’ (, Polemical Works, ii. 524–34, ed. Buddensieg, Wyclif Soc.) Analogous arguments are also used in the first treatise ‘De Religione Privata’ (ib. ii. 496–518), which, however, Dr. Buddensieg does not regard as being certainly the work of Wycliffe. In all these passages Wells is not mentioned by name, but simply as ‘quidam dompnus,’ ‘dompnus niger,’ ‘quidam reverendus monachus,’ and, less politely, as ‘quidam canis niger de ordine Benedicti.’ The identification is pretty clear, however, on the strength of the passages