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three jem later, and Ling&rd " entered the doors of Douai m the afternoon of 30 September, 1782 ". His career there was remarkably brilliant: only at one examination in the whole of hia course did he fail to lead hia class, and at the end of bis course in philoso- phy he was retained as professor of one of the lower humanity schools. Shortly before the linal catas- trophe whidi the French Revolution brought upon the house he escaped to England, in char;^ of two brothers named Oliveira and of William, afterwards I.OTd, Stourton. For nearlj" a year, he took charge of the latter's education at his father's residence, till, in Hay, 17M, Bishop William Gibson asked him to aid in caring for a section of the Douai refugees who were ateembled, first at Tudhoe, then at Pontop and Crook Hall — all places within a few miles of Durham. Nom- inally, he ncld the chair of philosophy: practically, be- sides the duties of vice-president to the Rev. Thomas Eyre, he undertook ia addition those of prefect of studies, procurator, and of professor of church history- It was in this last subject that he &rst found the true bent of hia genius. The result was his "History of the Anglo-Saxon Church", a development of conversa- tions and informal lectures round the winter evening fir«. IlM success suggested two further literary schemes: a history of the Anglo-Xorman Church and a school epitome of the history of England, of which the former was finally abandoned about IS14. and the latter about the same time be^n to expand into his life's work. It had been impossible for him to accom- plish anything during the interval, except in the way of gathering materials. The labours antecedent to and consequent upon the removal to Ushaw, in 1S08; the post of viciwiresident which he held there; and the sole charge of the house which dpvolved upon him on Byre's d^th, in May, ISIO, effectually deprived him qf leisure. He found time, however, for a few controversial worka, the titles of which will be found at the end of this article.
In 181 1 the Rev. Joiui Gillow wait appointed Presi- dent of Ushaw, and Linaird, refusing the correspond- ing position at Maynooui, which was olTercd him by Bishop Moylan, retired in September to Hornby, a country mission about eight miles from Lancaster. Various controversial publications (one of which, "A Review of (Certain Anli-Catholic Publications", Mkraed him the formal thanks of the Board of Catho- lics of Great Britain) were the first fruits of his leisure here. The " HiBtoY"i however, still in the form of an abridgement for schools, formed bis principal occu- pation. By the end of 1815 he had buried Henry VII and was returning to reviw." But the revision proved a rewriting, and the work began to exceed the bounds of a school-book. Two years more were de- voted to the examination and comparison of original authorities, for Lingard's new method of history? — practically unlieard of till then— insisted on tracing every statement back to its ori^nal author. He journeyed to Rome in the spring of 1817, partly to consult authorities in the Vatican archives, partly as the confidential agent of Bishop Poynt«r; and in this capacity he successfully concluded negotiations for the reconstitution and reopening of the English Ctflege at Rome. This wus by no means the first or the last of similar delicate commissions with which he was entrusted. Throughout his life he was in the confidence of the English bishops; he exhorted, he restrained, he advised, he was their authority on procedure, he drafted their letters to Rome; indeed, the moHt notable fact in his career, next to his power ' of writing bistof)', was the part which he took in making it, in Cl^oUc England during the first half of the nineteenth century.
In the winter after bis return from Rome he wua ready to think of publication, and tiie first three volumes, extendiug to the ileath of Henry VII, were finally purchased by Mawniun of London for 1000
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guineas. These were published in May, 1819, and met irith speedy and surprising success not only among English Catholics, but among scholars of every nationality and belief. A fourth volume was called for as soon as it could be prepared, and a second edition of all four was founa necessary before three . years were out. A growing enthusiasm greeted each successive volume till the work wus brought to what proved its ultimate conclusion — the revolution of 1688 — by the eighth volume, which ajipearcil tn IS:10. Meanwhile, a third edition had appcare<i in England; two translations had been published in France (one with a continuation to the nineteenth century, re- vised and corrected by Lingard himself); another had appeared in German, and yet another, in Italian, was printed by the Propaganda Press. Honours from every part of Eu- rope confirmed the general appreci- ation of the His- tory". Lingard's triple doctorate from Pius VII in 1821 , his associate- ship of the Royal Society of Litera- ture, and many other similar hon- ours were finallv crowned, in IS.'IO, bv a grant from the Privy Purse of £aOO and hk election aa a cor- rei<ponding mem- ber of the French Academy. It had also been gener- ally, if not universally, believed — till Cardinal Wiseman first traversed the tradition nearly forty
Crs later, in his "Last Four Popes" — that XH. in a eoniiistory of 2 OctoI>er, 1826, had created Lingard cardinalin pclto, deferringthe promul- gation of the honour till the completion of the "His- tory" should leave him free to come to Rome. A somewhat heated controversy between Tii'mey and Wiseman foilowe<l the publicarion of the "La->1 Four Popes", and for a matter in which cerluinfy is now, as then, almost impossible, Ticrney seems to have had the better of the argument. Perhaps Lingnnl'B own opinion is more likely to be right than any ol her, and, though he affected to despise the nimour in the autumn of 1826, we find him before the end of the year asking and receiving advice on the ndvi^-^ibilitv of allowing the offer to be made. Towonls (he enil of his life he seems to have had no hesitation at all utiout the question. "Ho maile me cardinal", is hie un-
?ualined assertion to a friend in a letter of 22 Au^nist, B50.
Of course the " History" was criticized, but the very sources of the criticism showed how successfully Lin- gard had attained his ideal of unbiased accuracy. Slilner attacked the tono of the work in "The Ortho- dox Joum.il ", but the disagreement was rather one of method than of anything else; Milner woulil have converted England by the heavy bombardment of hard-hitting controverHy; Lingard realized that hia only chance of reaching the audience he desired lay in a sober, unimpassioned statement of incontrovertible fact. Dr. John Allen, then Muster of Dulwich School, reached the other pole of criticism, and accused htm of prejudiced distortion and supjireiwion of tacts in his account of the Ma!<sacre of St Bartholomew. It wa«thponlvatlaekof which Lingard ever took formal notice, ami the publication of Siilvi:ini'« secret dis- patches a few years later sciiree|j- addeil anything to the weight of his tr ' — ' "^ — '■ — •■ — " ' — '""^
a triumphant " Vindicatio
