his last vote upon the Jewish disabilities question on 25 May 1848, and died on 24 Nov. of the same year, leaving no child.
Melbourne's manners were unconventional, and his talk interlarded with oaths. His conversation was a piquant mixture of learning, shrewdness, and paradox (for specimens see especially Greville, pt. i. vol. iii. pp. 129–33, Haydon, Life, ii. 350–405 passim; Leslie, Autobiography, i. 169 et seq.) Thus he said that Croker would dispute with the Recording Angel about the number of his sins, and of the results of the Catholic Emancipation Bill—‘the worst of it is, the fools were in the right.’ At the same time his was a peculiarly pensive and solitary mind. As a statesman he has been thought wanting in purpose and firmness. But Lady Palmerston declared that earnestness was the essential element of his character, and he was certainly firm enough with Brougham and William IV. The truth seems to be that he was a genuine liberal on many points, notably that of religious equality, and a conscientious supporter of the programme bequeathed to him by Grey. Further than that he was not inclined to go, and opposed an invariable ‘Why not leave it alone?’ to the proposals of the radical section of his party. As the instructor of a young sovereign he won universal approbation.
[Torrens's Memoirs of Lord Melbourne, 2 vols.; Lord Melbourne's Papers, edited by Lloyd C. Sanders, with preface by Earl Cowper; Queen Victoria's Letters, 1837–1861, ed. Esher and Benson, 1907; Hayward's Essay on Lord Melbourne (a reprint, with additions, from the Quarterly Review for January, 1878), in his Celebrated Statesmen and Writers; Greville Memoirs, especially pt. ii. vol. iii. pp. 241 et seq.; Sir H. Taylor's Autobiography; Miss E. J. Whately's Life and Correspondence of Archbishop Whately; Lord Houghton, in the Fortnightly Review, vol. xxix.; Earl Cowper in the Nineteenth Century, vol. xv.; Spencer Walpole's Life of Lord John Russell and Hist. of England, vol. iii.; Sir D. Le Marchant's Memoir of Lord Althorp; Sir T. Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, vol. i.; Dunckley's Lord Melbourne (Queen's Prime Ministers Ser.)]
LAMBARDE, WILLIAM (1536–1601), historian of Kent, born in the parish of St. Nicholas Acon, London, on 18 Oct. 1536, was the eldest son of John Lambarde, draper, alderman, and sheriff of London, by his first wife, Julian, daughter and ultimately heiress of William Horne of London. On the death of his father in August 1554, he inherited the manor of Westcombe in Greenwich, Kent. He was admitted of Lincoln's Inn on 12 April 1556, and studied Anglo-Saxon and history with Laurence Nowell [q. v.] (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 426). His first work, undertaken at the request of Nowell, was a collection and translation, or rather paraphrase, of the Anglo-Saxon laws published under the title of ‘Ἀρχαιονομία, sive de priscis Anglorum legibus libri, sermone Anglico vetustate antiquissimo, aliquot abhinc seculis conscripti, atq; nunc demum … e tenebris in lucem vocati, G. Lambardo interprete,’ 4to, London, 1568; republished with Bede's ‘Historia Ecclesiastica’ in 1644, fol., by Abraham Wheelock. Some notes and corrections for ‘Archaionomia’ by Francis Junius [q. v.] are in the Bodleian Library (ib. iii. 1142). In 1570, when residing at Westcombe, Lambarde completed the first draft of his ‘Perambulation of Kent: containing the Description, Hystorie, and Customes of that Shyre,’ and sent it to his friend Thomas Wotton. It was read in manuscript and commended by Archbishop Parker and Lord-treasurer Burghley. Wotton printed it with the author's additions in 1576, 4to, London. This, the earliest county history known, is justly considered a model of arrangement and style. The first edition contains ‘The Names of suche of the Nobilitie and Gentrie as the Heralds recorded in their Visitation, 1574,’ which is omitted in subsequent issues. A second edition appeared in 1596, a third edition is undated, and others were issued in 1640 and 1656. A reprint of the second edition, with a life of Lambarde, was published at Chatham in 1826, 8vo. From Lambarde's own letter to Wotton, accompanying the second edition, it appears that he had already collected materials for a general account of England, of which the ‘Perambulation’ was an instalment. He abandoned his design upon learning that Camden was engaged on a similar undertaking (cf. his letter to Camden, dated 29 July 1585, in Camdenii Epistolæ, p. 28). His materials, however, were published from the original manuscript in 1730, 4to, London, as ‘Dictionarium Angliæ Topographicum et Historicum,’ &c., with his portrait engraved by Vertue. Camden, in acknowledging his obligations to the ‘Perambulation,’ eulogises Lambarde as ‘eminent for learning and piety’ (Britannia, ‘Kent,’ Introduction); the ‘piety’ apparently refers to his having founded almshouses at East Greenwich called the College of the Poor of Queen Elizabeth. The queen granted letters patent for the foundation of this charity in 1574, and it was opened on 1 Oct. 1576.
On 9 Feb. 1578–9 Lambarde was chosen a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and on 6 Aug. of the same year was appointed a justice of the peace for Kent. He fulfilled his duties honourably, and expounded them in ‘Eiren-
