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TYRRELL, sir j.—tyrwhitt
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least eight years before this he had been more or less in conflict with the authorities of his order, through his sympathy with “modernist” views, but the publication of this letter (afterwards issued by Tyrrell as A Much Abused Letter) brought about his expulsion from the order in February 1906. “The conflict,” he wrote, “such as it is, is one of opinion and tendencies, not of persons; it is the result of mental and moral necessities created by the antitheses with which the Church is wrestling in this period of transition.” Tyrrell found no bishop to give him an ecclesiastical status and a celebret, and he never regained these privileges. In July 1907 the Holy Office published its decree condemning certain modernist propositions, and in September the pope issued his encyclical Paseendi Gregis. Tyrrell's criticism of this document appeared in The Times on the 30th of September and the 1st of October, and led to his virtual excommunication from the Church. In the few years that remained to him he gave himself with patience and dignity to the work of his life. He had already published Lex orandi, insisting that the true interpretation of the creed is determined by its prayer value, and in 1906 he wrote Lex credendi. This was followed by Through Scylla and Charybdis, in which he developed his favourite view of revelation as experience; Mediaefvalism, a vigorous apologia in reply to a Lenten pastoral of Cardinal Mercier, archbishop of Malines, who had attacked him as the chief exponent of Modernism; and Christianity at the Cross Roads, which emphasizes the distinction between his own position and that of the Liberal Protestants, and is of special interest for its treatment of the eschatological problems of the Gospels. On the 6th of July 1909 he was suddenly taken ill, on the 10th he received conditional absolution from a priest of the diocese of Southwark, and on the 12th extreme unction from the prior of Storrington. His intimate friend, the Abbé Bremond, gave him the last absolution and remained with him until his death on the 15th of July 1909. Such appear to be the facts, but Tyrrell's relations with Rome were such that a good deal of mystery was made as to whether he really received the last rites of his Church in any authorized manner. About his own saintly and sympathetic character, and his essential religiousness, there was no doubt.

See the estimates by Baron F. von Hügel and Rev. C. E. Osborne in The Hibbert Journal for January 1910; also the obituary in The Times (July 16, 1909), and the Life, by Miss M. D. Petre.


TYRRELL, SIR JAMES (d. 1502), the supposed murderer of the English king Edward V., and of his brother Richard, duke of York, was a son of William Tyrrell and a grandson of Sir John Tyrrell (d. c. 1437), who was treasurer of the royal household and was on three occasions Speaker of the House of Commons. The family is said to descend from Walter Tirel, the murderer of William Rufus. During the Wars of the Roses James Tyrrell fought for the Yorkists; in 1471 he was knighted; and in 1477 he was member of parliament for Cornwall. With regard to his share in the murder of the prince in 1483 he appears to have been selected by Richard III. and sent to the Tower of London, where he supervised the crime which was carried out by his subordinates. Afterwards he received several appointments from Richard and was sent to Flanders. He was also employed by Henry VII. and was made governor of Guisnes, but he seems to have incurred the king's displeasure through his friendship with Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. Having been treacherously seized he was conveyed to England and was executed on the "6th of May 1502. Just before his death he made a confession about the murder of the princes.

Members of the same family were Sir Thomas Tyrrell (1594-1672), justice of the common pleas under Charles II., and Anthony Tyrrell (1552-c. 1610), a Roman Catholic priest and spy, who afterwards became a clergyman of the Church of England.


TYRTAEUS, Greek elegiac poet, lived at Sparta about the middle of the 7th century B.C. According to the older tradition he was a native of the Attic deme of Aphidnae, and was invited to Sparta at the suggestion of the Delphic oracle to assist the Spartans in the second Messenian war. According to a later version, he was a lame schoolmaster, sent by the Athenians as likely to be of the least assistance to the Spartans (Justin iii. 5; Themistius, Orat. xv. 242; Diod. Sic. xv. 67). A fanciful explanation of his lameness is that it alludes to the elegiac couplet, one verse of which is shorter than the other. According to Plato (Laws, p. 629 A), the citizenship of Sparta was conferred upon Tyrtaeus, although Herodotus (ix. 35) makes no mention of him among the foreigners so honoured. Basing his inference on the ground that Tyrtaeus speaks of himself as a citizen of Sparta (Fr. 2), Strabo (viii. 362) is inclined to reject the story of his Athenian origin. Suidas speaks of him as “Laconian or Milesian”; possibly he visited Miletus in his youth, where he became familiar with the Ionic elegy. Busolt, who suggests that Tyrtaeus was a native of Aphidnae in Laconia, conjectures that the entire legend may have been concocted in connexion with the expedition sent to the assistance of Sparta in her struggle with the revolted Helots at Ithome (464). However this may be, it is generally admitted that Tyrtaeus flourished during the second Messenian war (c. 650 B.C.) — a period of remarkable musical and poetical activity at Sparta, when poets like Terpander and Thaletas were welcomed — that he not only wrote poetry but served in the field, and that he endeavoured to compose the internal dissensions of Sparta (Aristotle, Politics, v. 6) by inspiring the citizens with a patriotic love for their fatherland. About twelve fragments (three of them complete poems) are preserved in Strabo, Lycurgus, Stobaeus and others. They are mainly elegiac and in the Ionic dialect, written partly in praise of the Spartan constitution and King Theopompus (Eὐνομία), partly to stimulate the Spartan soldiers to deeds of heroism in the field (Ὑποθῆκαι — the title is, however, later than Tyrtaeus). The interest of the fragments preserved from the Eὐνομία is mainly historical, and connected with the first Messenian war. The Ὑποθῆκαι which are of considerable merit, contain exhortations to bravery and a warning against the disgrace of cowardice. The popularity of these elegies in the Spartan army was such that, according to Athenaeus (xiv. 630 F), it became the custom for the soldiers to sing them round the camp fires at night, the polemarch rewarding the best singer with a piece of flesh. Of the marching songs (Ἐμβατήρια), written in the anapaestic measure and the Doric dialect, only scanty fragments remain (Lycurgus, In Leocratem, p. 211, § 107; Pausanias iv. 14, 5. 15, 2; fragments in T. Bergk, Poetae lyrici graeci, ii.).

Verrall (Classical Review, July 1896, May 1897) definitely places the lifetime of Tyrtaeus in the middle of the 5th century B.C., while Schwartz (Hermes, 1899, xxxiv.) disputes the existence of the poet altogether; see also Macan in Classical Review (February 1897); H. Weil, Études sur l'antiquité grecque (1900), and C. Giarratani, Tirteo e i suoi carmi (1905). There are English verse translations by R. Polwhele (1792) and imitations by H. J. Pye, poet laureate (1795), and an Italian version by F. Cavallotti, with text, introduction and notes (1898). The fragment beginning Τεθναμέναι γάρ καλόν has been translated by Thomas Campbell, the poet. The edition by C. A. Klotz (1827) contains a dissertation on the war-songs of different countries.


TYRWHITT, THOMAS (1730-1786), English classical scholar and critic, was born in London on the 27th of March 1730, where he died on the 15th of August 1786. He was educated at Eton and Queen's College, Oxford (fellow of Merton, 1755). In 1756 he was appointed under-secretary at war, in 1762 clerk of the House of Commons. In 1768 he resigned his post, and spent the remainder of his life in learned retirement. In 1784 he was elected a trustee of the British Museum, to which he bequeathed a portion of his valuable library.

His principal classical works are: Fragmenta Plutarchi II. inedita (!773). from a Harleian MS.; Dissertatio de Babrio (1776), containing some fables of Aesop, hitherto unedited, from a Bodleian MS.; the pseudo-Orphic De lapidibus (1781), which he assigned to the age of Constantius; Conjecturae in Strabonem (1783); Isaeus De Meneclis hereditate (1785); Aristotle's Poetica, his most important work, published after his death under the superintendence of Dr Burgess, bishop of Salisbury, in 1794. Special mention is due of his editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1775-1778); and of Poems, supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley