undertake a journey in Africa in the service of the newly formed Association for Promoting African Exploration, and was paid his salary in spite of his absence from Gibraltar. He left England in August 1788 with the intention of crossing the desert from Tripoli to Fezzan, collecting information from the people of Fezzan and traders respecting the interior, and returning home by way of the Gambia or the Guinea coast. He landed at Tripoli at the end of October, and was well received by the bashaw. When on the point of starting for Fezzan, he was delayed by the revolt of the principal tributary tribe of Arabs. Meanwhile two shereefs arrived at Tripoli, and offered to be responsible with their lives for his safe conduct. Lucas accepted the offer, and started on a mule, given by the bashaw, in company with eighteen other persons all armed, in February 1789. On the fourth day of the journey he reached the ruins of Lebida, and found remains of a great Roman colony. On the seventh day he reached Menrata, but the war with the Arabs rendered it impossible that Fezzan could be reached before the winter. By promising the copy of a map of Africa to one of the shereefs who had travelled as factor in the slave-trade for the king of Fezzan, he obtained much information about Fezzan, Bornou, and Nigritia, which ‘diminished his disappointment at not completing his journey.’ He left Memoon on 20 March 1789, reached Tripoli on 6 April, and England on 26 July. His account of Africa was published in the ‘Reports’ of the African Association, in the service of which he was succeeded by Major Daniel Houghton [q. v.] The date of his death has not been discovered.
[Reports of the African Association, vol. i. 1790; Georgian Era, iii. 467 et seq.]
LUCIUS, a legendary hero, is called the first Christian king in Britain, and is supposed to have lived in the second century. There is no record of his existence until three or four centuries after his supposed death; the story that Pope Eleutherus received a letter from Lucius, a British king, announcing his conversion to Christianity, originated in the fifth or sixth century, and appears in the ‘Catalogus Pontificum Romanorum,’ written about 530 (Acta SS., 1 April, i. xxiii). The original ‘Catalogus,’ written shortly after 353, says nothing about it. Beda copies the story (Hist. Eccl. i. 4, v. 24), and in Nennius's ninth-century account, the earliest British testimony, Lucius is identified with Lleuer Mawr, a chieftain in South Wales, whose name, expressing the idea of brightness, corresponds to the Latin Lucius. In the Welsh triads and genealogies, whose date is uncertain, this chieftain is called the founder of the church of Llandaff (Myv. Arch. ii. 63, 68), and the names of Dyfan, Ffagan, Medwy, and Elfan, possibly real personages, are given as those of the messengers Eleutherus sent from Rome (Achau y Saint); the ‘Book of Llandaff’ (ed. Rees, pp. 65, 310) calls the first two Lucius's messengers to Rome. The Welsh stories want detail, and there is nothing improbable in their account if earlier authority for Lucius's existence were forthcoming.
The legend of Lucius owes its wealth of detail to Geoffrey of Monmouth; the greater part of his narrative is at direct variance with authentic history, and the whole must be rejected. William of Malmesbury in all probability had no sure authority for connecting Lucius with Glastonbury. By the fourteenth century a letter to Lucius from Eleutherus had been forged (Spelman, Concilia, i. 31), and by the seventeenth century a gold coin, now in the British Museum, and a silver coin, purporting to have been issued from Lucius's mint, had also been manufactured (Ussher, Brit. Eccl. Ant. v. cc. iii. sq.) After the twelfth century Lucius appears frequently as a benefactor to the church, and later still to the university of Cambridge. Confusion with a continental teacher of the same name explains the stories of his missionary labours abroad and of his martyrdom (ib.)
[Haddan and Stubbs' Councils, i. 25, 26; Dictionary of Christian Biography, s. v.]
LUCKOMBE, PHILIP (d. 1803), miscellaneous writer, was born at Exeter. After acting as a printer for twelve years, he is said to have entered ‘one of the Oxford colleges’ (Nichols), but his name does not figure in the university register. He subsequently settled in London, and did much miscellaneous literary work. Besides editing several dictionaries and cyclopædias, he wrote books on printing, and made a special study of conchology. His collection of shells was considerable, and his learning brought him the acquaintance of Bishop Percy. He died in September 1803. There is a mezzotint octavo oval portrait of him, drawn by T. Kearsley and engraved by R. H. Laurie.
His principal works are:
- ‘A Concise History of the Origin and Progress of Printing,’ 1770, 8vo.
- ‘The History and Art of Printing,’ 2 parts, 1771, 8vo.
- ‘A Tour through Ireland,’ 1780, 12mo.
- ‘The Traveller's Companion, or a New Itinerary of England and Wales,’ 1789, 8vo.
- ‘Eng-
