Hugh was educated at Dr. Lempriere's [q. v.] school in his native town; subsequently became a student of the then united medical schools of St. Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals in Southwark, and took the diploma of the College of Surgeons. He then studied at Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. 24 June 1813. His graduation thesis was on the pathology of phthisis. On 30 Sept. 1818 he was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London, and began practice in London as a man midwife. He was elected physician to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, and soon afterwards became lecturer on midwifery at the Middlesex Hospital. On 20 April 1835 he accepted the unanimous invitation of the staff of St. Bartholomew's Hospital to deliver the lectures on midwifery in their school. His course was the first delivered in the summer, it having before been the general custom of the medical schools of London to have no regular classes except in the winter. In 1836 he published ‘An Essay on Laryngismus Stridulus, or Crouplike Inspiration of Infants,’ a volume of 480 pages. The first accurate clinical description of the disease in England is contained in the ‘Commentaries on the Diseases of Children’ (1815) of Dr. John Clarke (pt. i. p. 86), but Ley's is the first book containing a full pathological discussion of the malady. He endeavours to prove that the spasm of the larynx, which is its characteristic symptom, is caused by the pressure of enlarged lymphatic glands on the recurrent laryngeal nerve. Subsequent experience has shown that in many cases no enlarged glands are present, and the fact that the book records numerous deaths from the disease shows that its author had confused cases of tubercular meningitis with those of laryngismus stridulus, a disorder now known to be rarely, if ever, fatal. The book shows much industry, but is too long and not clear. His thesis, printed at Edinburgh in 1813, is his only other publication. He lived in Half-Moon Street, London, but died, from heart disease, at Stilton, Huntingdonshire, 24 Jan. 1837.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. iii. 192; private manuscript memorandum-book belonging to the medical officers of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, September 1834; Lancet, January 1837; J. Earle's Address to Medico-Chirurgical Society, 28 Feb. 1837; Ley's Works.]
LEY, JAMES, first Earl of Marlborough (1550–1629), judge and politician, born in 1550, was sixth and youngest son of Henry Ley, who was descended from the Leys of Ley in Devonshire, but was granted by the crown in 1545 the manor and advowson of Teffont-Ewyas, Wiltshire. Ley's mother was Dyonisia de St. Mayne. His father (d. 7 June 1574) and elder brothers, William (d. 5 April 1624) and Matthew (d. 24 May 1632 aged 87), are buried in the church of Teffont-Ewyas, and inscriptions to their memory are extant there (cf. Hoare, Wiltshire Hundred of Dunworth, pp. 113–14). James entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1569, as a commoner, and after graduating B.A. (3 Feb. 1573–4) he became a student at Lincoln's Inn. He was called to the bar 11 Oct. 1584, and soon distinguished himself by his ‘great proficiency in the municipal law.’ He became a judge for the counties of Carmarthen, Pembroke, and Cardigan, and he entered the House of Commons as M.P. for Westbury in 1597–8. He was elected a bencher of his inn in 1600 and reader in 1602. In 1603 he was made a serjeant-at-law, and in the following year was appointed lord chief justice of the king's bench in Ireland, and was knighted while on a visit with the king to the Earl of Pembroke's house at Wilton (8 Oct. 1603). He was the first English judge to make a circuit in Wicklow (November 1606) after it had been made a shire. From 6 April to 8 Nov. 1605 he was a commissioner of the great seal at Dublin. In that capacity he seems to have strained his powers by issuing general ‘mandates’ or precepts, directing catholic recusants to attend church under pain of appearing in the Star Chamber, and he made a practice of refusing the defendants copies of the indictments against them when they did appear. He thus became ‘generally hated throughout the kingdom,’ and frequent petitions were sent to Dublin Castle, bitterly complaining of his harsh administration of justice. The English privy council supported his policy (cf. Cal. State Papers, Irish, 1603–1606, pp. 374, 398, 509). He was very regular in his attendance at the meetings of the Irish council, and was an unvarying supporter of very vigorous methods of government. In 1608 he was made a commissioner for the plantation of Ulster (ib. 1606–1608, pp. xxxviii, 397). James I took ‘such a liking to him’ and formed ‘such an opinion of his ability to do him service,’ that in December 1608 he transferred him from the Irish bench to the profitable post of attorney of the court of wards and liveries in England (ib. 1608–10, p. 116). A right of precedence which he claimed over the king's attorney-general, Sir Henry Hobart, was confirmed under the privy seal 15 May 1609. He had been re-elected M.P. for Westbury to the parliaments of 1604–5 and 1609–1611, and sat for Bath in that of 1614. From 1609 to 1622 Ley was a governor of Lincoln's
