first translated out of French into English by Henry Lyte, Esquyer. At London by me Gerard Dewes, dwelling in Pawles Churchyarde, at the signe of the Swanne, 1578.’ On the back of the title-page is Lyte's coat of arms and a crest, ‘a swan volant silver upon a trumpet gold,’ which was not actually granted him by Clarenceux king of arms until the following year. This is followed by a dedication to Queen Elizabeth, dated from Lytes Cary, commendatory verses, and a portrait of Dodoens. Lyte added very little original matter to the text. A second edition, without any woodcuts, was printed in London by Ninian Newton, in square 8vo, in 1586, and a third by Edm. Bollifant, in the same size, in 1595. A folio edition, also without woodcuts, was published by Edward Griffin in 1619. Editions are stated, probably in error, to have been published in 1589, 1600, and 1678. An abridgment of it by W. Ram was published in 4to in 1606, under the title of ‘Rams little Dodoen.’
Lyte's second work was ‘The Light of Britayne; a Recorde of the honorable Originall and Antiquitie of Britaine,’ 1588, also dedicated to Elizabeth, and containing her portrait. Its object is to trace the descent of the British from the Trojans. Lyte presented a copy of this work to the queen on 24 Nov. 1588, when she went in state to St. Paul's to return thanks for the defeat of the Armada (Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, ii. 539; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vii. 569–70). The ‘Light of Britayne’ was reprinted in 1814; two copies, one in the British Museum, and the other in the possession of Mr. H. Maxwell Lyte, C.B., Lyte's lineal representative, were printed on vellum. In 1592 Lyte wrote two small works on the same subject, which have never been printed. These are ‘Records of the true Origin of the noble Britons,’ and ‘The Mystical Oxon of Oxenford, alias a true and most ancient Record of the Original of Oxford and all Britain.’ Wood describes these manuscripts as ‘written with the author's own hand very neatly, an. 1592, the character small, lines close, some words in red ink, and others only scored with it,’ and he says that the latter contains ‘many pretty fancies which may be of some use … by way of reply for Oxon against the far-fetch'd antiquities of Cambridge’ (Athenæ Oxon. ii. cols. 22–3). These manuscripts, after being in the possession of the Oxford antiquaries, Miles Windsore and Bryan Twyne, are now in the archives of the university of Oxford, not, as stated by Lowndes, in the university library, nor, as Mr. Carew Hazlitt says, at University College. Lyte also drew up ‘A table whereby it is supposed that Lyte of Lytescarie sprange of the Race and Stocke of Leitus … and that his Ancestors came to Englande first with Brute,’ now in the British Museum (Harleian Rolls, H. 26), and also a roll containing a poem entitled, ‘A description of the Swannes of Carie that came first under mightie Brute's protection from Caria in Asia to Carie in Britain.’ The latter was printed in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 6th ser. viii. 109–10, and is now in Mr. Maxwell Lyte's possession.
Lyte's second son, who succeeded him, was Thomas Lyte [q. v.] the genealogist. His third son, Henry (b. 1573), was one of the earliest users of decimal fractions, and published in 1619 ‘The Art of Tens and Decimall Arithmetike,’ dedicated to Charles, prince of Wales, and based mainly on the French work ‘La Disme,’ published in 1590. He is described as a teacher of arithmetic in London.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon.; Pulteney's Biographical Sketches of the Hist. of Botany; William George's Lytescary Manor House, 1879; Lyte's Works, and Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archæological Society, vol. xxxviii., by H. Maxwell Lyte.]
LYTE, HENRY FRANCIS (1793–1847), hymn-writer, born at Ednam, near Kelso, Roxburghshire, 1 June 1793, was second son of Captain Thomas Lyte, and a lineal descendant of Henry Lyte [q. v.] and Thomas Lyte [q. v.] He was educated at Portora (the royal school of Enniskillen) in Ireland, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he became scholar in 1813, and competed successfully for three prize poems in three successive years. Abandoning an intention of entering the medical profession, he took holy orders, and in 1815 he was made curate of Taghmon, near Wexford. Ill-health led him to resign this post, and after a visit to the continent he went to Marazion, Cornwall, where he married Anne, daughter and eventual heiress of the Rev. W. Maxwell, D.D. of Falkland, co. Monaghan, who wrote the twenty-fourth chapter of Boswell's ‘Life of Johnson.’ Subsequently he held the curacies of Lymington, Hampshire, where much of his verse was written, and of Charlton, Devonshire. At Lower Brixham he laboured for twenty-five years in charge of a new parish. His health compelled him to make frequent foreign tours. He died on 20 Nov. 1847 at Nice, where his grave, in the English cemetery, is marked by a marble cross. A portrait by John King (1788–1847) [q. v.] was engraved by Phillips. In conjunction with his son, J. W. Maxwell Lyte, he formed a very extensive library, chiefly of theology and old
