and at Mr. Francis Woodhouse, of Cisson, near Wendlam [Wendling?], found the Reverend Dom Sigebert Buckley, the only monk left of the old monks of Westminster, whom King James a few months before had ordered to be freed from his prison at Fromegham [Framlingham]. From which time he and F. Thomas Preston took care of the old man till his happy exit from this world’ (Chronological Notes, 46). Being the sole surviving monk of Westminster, the rights of the abbey and of the old English congregation of St. Benedict were vested in him. Arrangements were made with the general chapter of the Monte Cassino congregation that their fathers in England should become aggregated to the old English congregation. Buckley, who had been arrested after the discovery of the Gunpowder plot, received at the Gatehouse prison in London, on 21 Nov. 1607, the profession of two of the monks lately arrived from the continent—viz. of Robert (Vincent) Sadler and of Edward Maihew; and on 15 Dec. 1609 he surrendered all his powers and authority for perpetuating the succession to Father Thomas Preston. The old monk, who had become quite blind, died shortly after this, on 22 Feb. 1609–10, aged 93, ‘and because the heretics would not let him be buried in the churchyard, F. Anselm of Manchester and Father Thomas Preston buried him in an old chapel or country hermitage near Ponshall, the seat of Mr. Norton, in Surrey or Sussex’ (Weldon, Chronological Notes, 76). It may be added that three separate congregations of the Benedictine order existed in England for a time, namely the Spanish, the Italian, and the renewed English congregation. A union among them was felt to be most desirable, and after many difficulties and obstacles was secured by the brief Ex incumbenti of Pope Paul V in 1619.
[Dodd's Church Hist. i. 527, also Tierney's edit. iv. 89; Snow's Necrology of the English Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, 30; Reyner's Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Angliâ, 247, Append. i. 4; Weldon's Chronological Notes, 46, 47, 49, 60, 62, 76, Append. 4; J. Stevens's Hist. of the Antient Abbeys, i. 182; Sweeney's Life of Augustine Baker, 20–5; Oliver's Catholic Religion in Cornwall, 473.]
BUCKLEY, THEODORE WILLIAM ALOIS (1825–1856), classical scholar, was born on 27 July 1825, and was a protégé of the well-known Greek scholar, George Burges. He regularly attended the British Museum Library, where he is described as ‘a fresh-coloured youth, with flaxen and slightly curling hair, poring over works of which some of the best scholars knew little more than the name.’ One of the earliest subjects on which he was here engaged was an edition of ‘Apuleius de Deo Socratis,’ for which he was collecting material with a view to publication. For this he had no means. He was very poor. From the age of twelve he was self-taught. His library, which when transferred to Oxford weighed a ton and a half, was picked up at old bookstalls at the cheapest prices. In this manner he had collected a set very nearly complete of the 4to Dutch Latin classics. He was fortunate in his purchases. It is told of him, for instance, that he procured an Aldine ‘Aristophanes’ for 4s., the title-page of which was supposed wanting, but was afterwards discovered by him to be merely misplaced. The expense of printing his ‘Apuleius de Deo Socratis’ was defrayed by the Rt. Hon. Thomas Grenville, to whom it was dedicated, in 1844. Some friends conceived the idea of sending young Buckley to Oxford, and made intercession with the dean of Christ Church, who promised him a servitorship. He distinguished himself at the university. His Latin prose was acknowledged by the dean the purest he had ever met. He was made one of the chaplains of Christ Church. In addition to his classical knowledge, he possessed considerable musical talent, inherited from his mother, who had performed at public concerts with success, and was a daughter of the celebrated Dussek. Organic disease is supposed to have induced a recourse to opium, and subsequently to alcohol. He came to London, and wrote for the booksellers. His ode to Miss Florence Nightingale, inserted in ‘Punch,’ and subsequently copied into the ‘Times,’ is remarkable as being probably the only instance remaining of his poetic power. He died of fever on 30 Jan. 1856, and was buried in Woking cemetery. Besides contributions to many periodicals, as Dickens's ‘Household Words,’ ‘Eliza Cook's Journal,’ ‘Sharpe's Magazine,’ ‘Freemason's Journal,’ ‘Parker's Miscellany,’ and ‘The Press,’ he revised for H. G. Bohn's series of classical authors translations of Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristotle's ‘Rhetoric and Poetry,’ Horace and Virgil, of which the second volumes of Homer and Euripides were first translated into literal prose by him, and the whole published in the years 1849–53. For Routledge he edited Chaucer's ‘Canterbury Tales,’ Foxe's ‘Book of Martyrs,’ Milton's ‘Poetical Works,’ ‘New Elegant Extracts’ in verse, and abridged Calmet's ‘Biblical Dictionary,’ and translated the ‘Catechism of the Council of Trent’ and the ‘Decrees of the Council of Trent.’ He also composed for
