Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hyde, David de la
HYDE, DAVID de la (fl. 1580), classical scholar, was, in Wood's opinion, an Irishman by birth. There was an Irish knightly family of the name seated at Moyclare in King's County, the heads of which—Sir Walter and his son Sir James de la Hyde suffered proscription for their share in Fitzgerald's revolt of 1535 (Holinshed, ii. 96, ed. Hooker; Froude, Hist. of England, ii. 321). The family was possibly a branch of the De la Hydes of Brimpton in Berkshire (Ashmole, Berkshire, iii. 296).
David de la Hyde graduated B.A. at Merton College, Oxford, in 1548, was admitted probationary fellow of his college in 1549, and M.A. in 1553. He studied the civil law for five years, and supplicated to be admitted B.C.L. on 21 Feb. 1558, but admission was refused. De la Hyde was, says Wood, 'much adored for his most excellent faculty in disputing,' which he exercised both before the university and his own college. Ejected from Merton in 1560 for denying the queen's supremacy, he went to Ireland, `where,' says Richard Stanihurst (Description of Ireland, c. 7, ap. Holinshed, ii. 40), 'he became an exquisite and profound clerk, well seen in the Greek and Latin tongues, expert in the mathematics, and a proper antiquary. His pen was not lazy, but daily breeding of learned books.' He seems to have been in England again in 1561. In the list of the recusants of that year given by Strype (Annals, i. 412, ed. Oxford, 1824), De la Hyde is said to be 'at his liberty, saving that he is restrained to come within twenty miles of either of the universities.' He is noted in the margin as ` very stubborn, and worthy to be looked into.' Of the 'many learned books' of which Stanihurst speaks, there appears to be no trace. Wood, who had never seen them, says that they were printed over the sea. Two tracts by De la Hyde, 'Schemata rhetorica in tabulam contracta' and 'De ligno et fœno,' were known to Wood in manuscript. The latter, an oration delivered with great effect in Merton College Hall in praise of Jasper Heywood [q.v.], when Christmas lord, or king of misrule, in the college, is still extant among Wood's manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 456, ed. Bliss; Wood's Fasti, i. 126, 138, 154; Wood's Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford, ii. 136, 146, ed. Gutch; Dodd's Church Hist. ii. 116, Brussels, 1739.]