Admitted 27 October, 1631.
Son and heir of Sir Sapcoate Harrington of Rand, Lincolnshire, a member of a very old Worcestershire family. He entered at Oxford, but left without a degree, and went on a continental tour. Returning, he devoted himself to study, and is said to have translated Sanderson's De Juramevti Obligatione, whilst attendant upon Charles I. at Holmby House. This was published in 1655. His chief literary performance, however, was his imaginary sketch of a perfect political Commonwealth entitled Oceana, published in 1656, a work pronounced by Hume as "the only valuable model of a Commonwealth extant." Besides this he wrote some twenty tracts or treatises, mostly on the same subject, and many of them arising out of the controversy to which its publication gave rise. His complete works were published by Toland in a folio volume in 1700. In 1661 he was for some time imprisoned in the Tower, a confinement which affected his health mentally and bodily, and he died of paralysis at Westminster 11 Sept. 1677.
Admitted 4 December, 1839.
Eldest son of George Harris, solicitor, of Rugby, where he was born 6 May, 1809. He was called to the Bar 13 Jan. 1843. Taking to literary pursuits, he published a Life of Lord Hardwicke in 1847. In 1853 he became Deputy-County Court Judge of the Bristol district; in 1861 Acting Judge of the County Court at Birmingham; and in 1862 Registrar of the Bankruptcy Court, Manchester, from which, however, he was compelled to retire in 1868 from ill health. Meanwhile he interested himself in a project for forming a collection of historical manuscripts which should be accessible to inquirers, which led later on to the formation of the Historical Manuscripts Commission. Mr. Harris was a member of many learned societies, and one of the founders of the Psychological Society. He found a friend and patron in Lord Brougham, of whom he contributed a Memoir to the Law Magazine and Review, and which was published separately 1868. He also left behind him, besides many contributions to periodical literature, treatises on The Theory of Representation (1852); Civilisation Considered as a Science (1861); Principia prima Legum (1865); The Theory of the Arts; and in 1888 he printed for private circulation an Autobiography, with a preface by Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson.
Admitted 31 May, 1708.
Second son of Hopton Harris of Queen's County, Ireland. He was entered at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1704, and obtained a scholarship there, and though expelled for breach of discipline, received later (1753) the degree of LL.D. there. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1713. He married a great-grand-daughter of Sir James Ware, whose Latin works on Irish antiquities he translated into English, and from that time he devoted himself to the like study, and published consecutively: Historiographorum aliorumque scriptorum Hiberniæ Commentarium, or a History of Irish Writers (1736); Hibernica, or some Ancient Pieces relating to Ireland (1747); A History of William III. (1747); and a polemical tract entitled Fiction Unmasked (1762). He died in Dublin 26 July, 1761.
