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Nettles
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Nettleship

posed by Sir Henry Sidney, lord-deputy of Ireland, who in a letter to the queen on the occasion of his deputation, gave the following account of Netterville: ‘Netterville is the younger sonne of a meane Family and second Justice of one of the Benches borne to nothinge and yet onelye by your Majestyes Bountye Iyveth in better countenaunce than ever his father did or his elder brother dothe: and notwithstandinge that all he hath he holdeth of your Highnes in Effecte yet is he (your sacred Majestye not offended with so bad a Terme as his Lewdnes deserveth) as sedicious a Varlett and as great an Impugner of English Governement as any this Land bearethe and calls for severe dealing with.’ He and his companions were, as a result of the lord-deputy's letter, arrested and imprisoned for impugning the queen's right to levy cess independently of the parliament or grand council, but, on giving security, were released in August 1577, on account of the plague in the Fleet Prison, and before the close of the year they were pardoned. The cess, the abolition of which was the object of Netterville's mission, was reduced in amount.

In 1585 he was returned to parliament as M.P. for Dublin county. He died on 5 Sept. 1607, and was buried at Donabate, co. Dublin.

He was married to Alison, daughter of Sir John Plunket of Dunsoghly, chief justice of the queen's bench for Ireland, but had no issue. His heir, Nicholas, son of his elder brother John, was father of Sir John Netterville, second viscount Netterville [q. v.]

[Lodge's Peerage, ed. Archdall, iv. 204–6; Oliver Burke's Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland.]

P. L. N.

NETTLES, STEPHEN (fl. 1644), controversialist, a native of Shropshire, was admitted pensioner of Queens' College, Cambridge, on 25 June 1595, graduated B.A. in 1598-9, was elected fellow on 11 Oct. 1599, proceeded M.A. in 1602 (incorporated at Oxford on 13 July 1624), and commenced B.D. as a member of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1611 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500-1714, iii. 1056). In 1610 he became rector of Lexden, on 24 March 1617 vicar of Great Tey, which he resigned before 27 Jan. 1637-8, and in 1623 vicar of Steeple, all in Essex. He rendered himself obnoxious to the puritan party by writing a very learned and smart 'Answer to the Jewish Part of Mr. Selden's History of Tithes,' 4to, Oxford, 1625, and was ejected from his rectory on 16 Aug. 1644 by force of arms. Two of his sons were educated at Colchester grammar school.

[Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 416; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy; Trans. of Essex Archaeolog. Soc. new ser. vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 20 of Appendix.]

G. G.


NETTLESHIP, HENRY (1839–1893), Latin scholar, born on 5 May 1839 at Kettering, Northamptonshire, was the eldest of the six sons of Henry John Nettleship, solicitor, of Kettering, by his marriage with Isabella Ann, daughter of the Rev. James Hogg of the same town. After attending a preparatory school (Mr. Darnell's) at Market Harborough, Nettleship was sent in 1849 to the newly founded Lancing College, and thence, in 1852, to Durham School, at that time under the rule of Edward Elder [q. v.], a man for whose character and attainments Nettleship always retained a feeling of the utmost admiration. On Elder's removal to Charterhouse Nettleship followed him thither in 1854, and became a ‘gown-boy’ by winning an open foundation scholarship in 1855. Among his Charterhouse friends and contemporaries was Professor R. C. Jebb of Cambridge. His election in April 1857 to an open scholarship at Corpus Christi College—the college of which John Conington [q. v.], as Latin professor, was a fellow—was his first step in a distinguished Oxford career. He carried off the Hertford scholarship and the Gaisford prize for Greek prose in 1859; and, though he only achieved a ‘second’ in literæ humaniores, he won in the same year (1861) one of the two Craven scholarships (the other being taken by R. S., now Mr. Justice, Wright) and a fellowship at Lincoln College, where he was admitted as probationer on 20 Jan. 1862. In 1863 he won the chancellor's prize for a Latin essay, on a most forbidding subject, the civil war in America. He served for some years as tutor of Lincoln College, but resigned this office in 1868 to become an assistant-master at Harrow, under Dr. H. M. Butler. In 1870 he married Matilda, daughter of the Rev. T. H. Steel, another Harrow master. A man with Nettleship's intellectual aims and interests could hardly feel himself quite at home in a public school, though he was certainly much valued by his Harrow pupils and colleagues; it was therefore a welcome relief to him when he found himself in 1873 invited to return to Oxford as fellow of his original college, Corpus, and joint classical lecturer at Corpus and Christ Church. In 1878 he was elected to the Corpus professorship of Latin at Oxford, in succession to Professor Edwin Palmer; and he held the office with great success and distinction for fifteen years. Nettleship died at Oxford on 10 July 1893.