Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lingard, Richard
LINGARD or LYNGARD, RICHARD (1598?–1670), dean of Lismore, probably an Englishman, was educated at Cambridge. Proceeding to Ireland, he was ordained deacon on 22 Oct. 1621, priest on 22 Oct. 1622, and became vicar of Killaire in the county of Meath, a benefice which no longer exists. On 28 Sept. 1633 he was collated to the vicarage of St. Mary's, Athlone, with that of Kilclough and the curacy of Ballyloughloe, all in the diocese of Meath and the county of Westmeath. In March 1639 he was appointed archdeacon of Clonmacnoise. Charles I granted him the rectorial tithes of his benefice of Athlone as an augmentation, and added to them the tithes of Ratoath, near Dublin.
Lingard remained legally rector of Athlone until 1660, though his place was supplied by puritan preachers during the Commonwealth, and he himself was obliged to fly from his parish. At the Restoration he was appointed by royal mandate (dated 29 Dec. 1660) to a senior fellowship in the university of Dublin, and was made professor of divinity about the same time. On 31 May 1661, in conjunction with the vice-chancellor (Jeremy Taylor) and the provost (Thomas Seele), he was authorised by the university to arrange for the transfer of Archbishop Ussher's library from the castle to Trinity College, and to catalogue it. In 1662 he held the post of vice-provost of the university. He became D.D. of Dublin (ad eund. Cantabr.) in 1664, and dean of Lismore on 2 March 1666, in which year (6 April) he resigned his fellowship. On 15 July 1669 the university of Oxford directed that he should be admitted to the degree of D.D., ‘but whether he was so it appears not,’ says Wood. He died on or about 10 Nov. 1670, and was buried in the chapel of Trinity College, Dublin. A monument erected to his memory in the vestibule of the chapel has disappeared. In 1671 ‘An Elegy and Funeral Oration,’ spoken in memory of him in the college hall, in which ‘may be seen a just character of his great learning and worth,’ was published at Dublin.
He published: 1. ‘A Sermon preached before the King at Whitehall in Defence of the Liturgy,’ London, 1668. 2. ‘Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman [Lord Lanesborough] leaving the University,’ London, 1670, 1671, 1673, Dublin, 1713.
Lingard's will, preserved in the Record Office, Dublin (see Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. ii. 104–5), and proved in York, bears date 10 Nov. 1670. In it he referred to some literary notes, and gave instructions, which do not seem to have been carried out, for the printing of a few sermons.
[Ware's Writers (transl. Harris), p. 348; Taylor's Univ. of Dublin, pp. 40–1, 275, 409; Todd's Graduates of Dublin, p. 347; Dublin Univ. Cal. for 1872, pp. 381–2; Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ, i. 46 (new edit. p. 169), iii. 147, v. 25; Wood's Fasti (Bliss), ii. cols. 317–18; Stokes's Parish of Athlone in the Meath Diocesan Mag. March-June 1887, passim; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. ii. 104–5, 175; Brit. Mus. Cat. of Books; information from the Rev. W. Reynell, B.D.]