Lawrence. Lee exhibited for the last time in 1863, and died at Gravesend on 26 Dec. 1869, aged 79. There is an enamel painting by him at the South Kensington Museum.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760-1880; Royal Academy Catalogues.]
LEE, MATTHEW, M.D. (1694–1766), benefactor to Christ Church, Oxford, born in Northamptonshire in 1694, was the son of William Lee. In 1709 he was admitted on the foundation at Westminster School, and was elected to Christ Church in 1713. He contributed to the Oxford poems on the death of Dr. Radcliffe in 1716. He graduated B.A. in 1717, M.A. in 1720, M.B. in 1722, and M.D. in 1726. For some years he practised medicine successfully at Oxford, but about 1730 settled in London. He was admitted a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians on 12 April 1731 and a fellow on 8 April 1732. He was censor in 1734 and Harveian orator in 1736. His oration was published during the same year. In 1789 he was appointed physician to Frederick, prince of Wales. He died on 26 Sept. 1766 and was buried in the church of Little Linford, Buckinghamshire (Lipscomb, Buckinghamshire, iv. 233). By his wife, Sarah, youngest daughter of John Knapp, he had no children. His bust is in the library at Christ Church. In 1760 Lee founded an anatomical lectureship at Christ Church, which he endowed with an annual stipend of 140l.; he also gave money for building an anatomy school, and for converting the old library into rooms (Wood, Colleges and Halls, ed. Gutch, iii. 456, 461). He likewise bequeathed a sum of money for the establishment of exhibitions at Westminster School.
[Welch's Alumni Westmon. 1862, pp. 251, 259; Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, ii. 55-6, 119-21.]
LEE, NATHANIEL (1653?–1692), dramatist, is said to have been son of Richard Lee, D.D. The latter was educated at Cambridge (B. A. St, John's College, 1632), showed some taste for music, took holy orders, accepted the solemn league and covenant, and adnered through the civil wars to the parliament. By order of parliament he became rector of St. Martin's Orgar, London, in 1643, and an ordainer of ministers on the presbyterian model in 1644 (cf. Journal of the House of Commons, iii. 630). Preferment was liberally bestowed on him. He held at the same time the rectories of Hatfield, Hertfordshire (from 1647), of Little Gaddesden (from 1655}, and of Berkhampstead, St. Peter (from 1656), esides the mastership of Royston Hospital, Leicester, from 1650. He became chaplain to Monck, duke of Albemarle, and conformed after the Restoration. In 1663, in St. Mary's Church, Cambridge, and at St. Paul's Cathedral (29 Nov.), he preached a sermon—published with the title 'Cor Humiliatum et Contritum'—in which he recanted all his earlier opinions and confessed remorse for having taken the covenant, and for having expressed approval of Charles I's death. Robert Wilde, the presbyterian poet, satirised this change of front in a poem entitled 'Recantation of Penitent Proteus, or the Changeling.' 1664. Richard Lee died at Hatfield in 1684, aged 73, and was buried in the chancel of the cnurch there. The Hatfield registers contain entries of the baptisms of his sons Daniel (b. 1652), Richard (b. 1655), John, ye 10th child' (b. 1662), and Emmanuel, 'his sixt sonn* (b. 1667). The son Richard was vicar of Abbots Langley from 27 Oct. 1691 to 15 Sept. 1699, and rector of Essendon from 1699 till his death in 1725, at the age of seventy. An older son than any of these was named Samuel.
Nathaniel, perhaps the second son, was probably born in 1653. He was educated at Westminster School, and, according to Lord Rochester, was 'well lasht' by the head-master, Busby. On 7 July 1665 he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in January 1667-8 (information from W. Aldis Wright, esq.) To a collection of 'Threnodia' by Cambridge students on the death of his father's patron, George Monck, duke of Albemarle, he contributed an ode in English verse (cf. Nichols, Miscellany Poems, vii. 86). As a young man he is said to have been handsome and 'of an ingenious conversation,' and he seems to have obtained an entrance into fashionable society before leaving Cambridge. The Duke of Buckingham, who became chancellor of the university in 1671, is credited with having 'brought him up to town,' and with having wholly neglected him on his arrival there (Spence, Anecdotes, p. 62). But Lee came to know Rochester and other of his neglectful patron's abandoned friends, and he lost no time in imitating their vices, to the permanent injury of his health.
To earn a livelihood he at first sought to become an actor, and in 1672, according to Downes's 'Roscius Anglicanus ' (p. 34), was allotted the part of Duncan at the Dorset Garden Theatre in D'Avenant's adaptation of 'Macbeth.' but his acute nervousness rendered the experiment a failure, although he was reported to be an admirable elocutionist. Oldys assigns a similar result to his attempt to play a part in Mrs. Behn's 'Forced
