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William Lily (or William Lilly or Lilye; c. 146825 February 1522) was an English classical grammarian and scholar. He was an author of the most widely used Latin grammar textbook in England and was the first high master of St Paul's School, London.


Life

Lily was born in c. 1468 at
Odiham Odiham () is a large historic village and civil parish in the Hart district of Hampshire, England. It is twinned with Sourdeval in the Manche Department of France. The 2011 population was 4,406. The parish in 1851 had an area of 7,354 acres ...
, Hampshire and he entered the
University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...
in 1486. After graduating in arts he went on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
. On his return journey he put in at
Rhodes Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes (regional unit), Rhodes regional unit, w ...
, which was still occupied by the
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, under whose protection many Greeks had taken refuge after the capture of Constantinople by the
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. He then went on to Italy, where he attended the lectures of Angelus Sabinus, Sulpitius Verulanus and Pomponius Laetus at Rome, and of Egnatius at
Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
. After his return he settled in London—where he became friends with
Thomas More Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord ...
—as a private teacher of
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
, and is believed to have been the first who taught Greek in that city. In 1510
John Colet John Colet (January 1467 – 16 September 1519) was an English Catholic priest and educational pioneer. John Colet was an English scholar, Renaissance humanist, theologian, member of the Worshipful Company of Mercers, and Dean of St Paul's Ca ...
, dean of St Paul's, who was then founding the school which afterwards became famous, appointed Lily the first high master in 1512. Colet's correspondence with Erasmus shows he first offered the position to the Dutchman, who refused it, before considering Lily. Ward and Waller ranked Lily "with Grocyn and Linacre as one of the most erudite students of Greek that England possessed". Lily's pupils included William Paget, John Leland,
Antony Denny Sir Anthony Denny (16 January 1501 – 10 September 1549) was Groom of the Stool to King Henry VIII of England, thus his closest courtier and confidant. He was the most prominent member of the Privy chamber in King Henry's last years, having ...
,
Thomas Wriothesley Sir Thomas Wriothesley ( ; died 24 November 1534) was a long serving officer of arms at the College of Arms in London. He was the son of Garter King of Arms, John Writhe, and he succeeded his father in this office. Personal life Wriothesley was ...
and
Edward North, 1st Baron North Edward North, 1st Baron North ( 1504 – 1564) was an English peer and politician. He was the Clerk of the Parliaments 1531–1540 and Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire 1557–1564. A successful lawyer, he was created the first Baron North, gi ...
.Carley, "Leland, John (''c''.1503–1552)" The school became a paragon of classical scholarship. He died of the plague in London on 25 February 1522 and was buried in the north churchyard of
Old St Paul's Cathedral Old St Paul's Cathedral was the cathedral of the City of London that, until the Great Fire of 1666, stood on the site of the present St Paul's Cathedral. Built from 1087 to 1314 and dedicated to Saint Paul, the cathedral was perhaps the fourth ...
. His grave and monument were destroyed in the
Great Fire of London The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past t ...
in 1666. A modern monument in the crypt lists his as one of the important graves lost.


Works

Lily is famous not only as one of the pioneers of Greek learning, but as one of the joint-authors of a book, familiar to many generations of students up to the 19th century, the old Eton Latin grammar or ''Accidence''. This ''Brevissima Institutio'', a sketch by Colet, corrected by Erasmus and worked upon by Lily, contains two portions the author of which is indisputably Lily. These are the lines on the genders of nouns, beginning ''Propria quae maribus'', and those on the conjugation of verbs beginning ''As in praesenti''. The ''Carmen de Moribus'' bears Lily's name in the early editions; but Thomas Hearne asserts that it was written by Leland, who was one of his scholars, and that Lily only adapted it. However Erasmus himself stated:
At Colet's command, this book was written by William Lily, a man of no ordinary skill, a wonderful craftsman in the instruction of boys. When he had completed his work, it was handed over to, nay rather thrust upon, me for emendation. easier for me to do). So that Lily (endowed as he is with too much modesty) did not permit the book to appear with his name, and I (with my sense of candour) did not feel justified that the book should bear my name when it was the work of another. Since both of us refused our names it was published anonymously, Colet merely commending it in a preface.
An edition published in 1534 was entitled ''Rudimenta Grammatices''. Various other parts were added and a stable form finally appeared in 1540. In 1542
Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disagr ...
authorised it as the sole Latin grammar textbook to be used in education and schools; it has been suggested that Henry commissioned the book but the interval between initial publication and authorisation argue against this. With corrections and revisions,Wm. Lilly (1513
A Shorte Introduction of Grammar
Oxford by the Theater, link from
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it was used for more than three hundred years. It was so widely used by Elizabethan scholars that
Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
was able to refer to it in the second scene of Act IV of ''
Titus Andronicus ''Titus Andronicus'' is a tragedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593, probably in collaboration with George Peele. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy and is often seen as his attempt to em ...
'', quote from it in the first scene of Act II of ''
Henry IV, Part 1 ''Henry IV, Part 1'' (often written as ''1 Henry IV'') is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597. The play dramatises part of the reign of King Henry IV of England, beginning with the battle at ...
'' ("''Homo'' is a common name to all men") and allude to it in the first scene of Act IV of ''
The Merry Wives of Windsor ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' or ''Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare first published in 1602, though believed to have been written in or before 1597. The Windsor of the play's title is a ref ...
'' and scene 1 of Act IV of
Much Ado about Nothing ''Much Ado About Nothing'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599.See textual notes to ''Much Ado About Nothing'' in ''The Norton Shakespeare'' ( W. W. Norton & Company, 1997 ) p. 1387 The play ...
. Part of the grammar is a poem, "Carmen de Moribus", which lists school regulations in a series of pithy sentences, using a broad vocabulary, and examples of most of the rules of Latin grammar that were part of an English
grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary sch ...
curriculum. (See
Latin mnemonics A Latin mnemonic verse or mnemonic rhyme is a mnemonic device for teaching and remembering Latin grammar. Such mnemonics have been considered by teachers to be an effective technique for schoolchildren to learn the complex rules of Latin accidence ...
.) The poem is an early reinforcement of part of the reading list in Erasmus' ''De Ratione Studii'' of the Classical authors who should be included in the curriculum of a Latin grammar school. Specifically, the authors derived from Erasmus are
Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
,
Terence Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought T ...
, and
Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
. When
John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and politi ...
wrote his Latin grammar ''Accedence Commenc't Grammar'' (1669), over 60 percent of his 530 illustrative quotations were taken from Lily's grammar. Besides the ''Brevissima Institutio'', Lily wrote a variety of Latin pieces and translations from Greek, both in prose and verse. Some of the latter are printed along with the Latin verses of Sir Thomas More in ''Progymnasmata Thomae Mori et Gulielmi Lylii Sodalium'' (1518). Another volume of Latin verse (''Antibossicon ad Gulielmum Hormannum'', 1521) is directed against a rival schoolmaster and grammarian, Robert Whittington, who had "under the feigned name of Bossus, much provoked Lily with scoffs and biting verses." A sketch of Lily's life by his son George Lily was written for
Paulus Jovius Paolo Giovio (also spelled ''Paulo Jovio''; Latin: ''Paulus Jovius''; 19 April 1483 – 11 December 1552) was an Italian physician, historian, biographer, and prelate. Early life Little is known about Giovio's youth. He was a native of Com ...
, who was collecting for his history the lives of the learned men of Great Britain.


Notes


Sources

* Anders, Henry R. D., ''Shakespeare's books: A dissertation on Shakespeare's reading and the immediate sources of his works'' (New York: AMS, 1965) * * * Hedwig Gwosdek d. ''Lily's grammar of Latin in English : an introduction of the eyght partes of speche, and the construction of the same'', Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 2013, * Joseph Hirst Lupton, formerly sur-master of St Paul's School, in the ''
Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
''. * Ward, A. W. and Waller, A.R. (eds.) ''The Cambridge History of English and American Literature''. Volume III: ''Renascence and Reformation'' (Cambridge: University Press, 1908)


External links

* Archival Material at {{DEFAULTSORT:Lily, William 1460s births 1522 deaths 16th-century Latin-language writers 16th-century deaths from plague (disease) 16th-century English educators High Masters of St Paul's School Infectious disease deaths in England People from Odiham Grammarians of Latin Schoolteachers from Hampshire