an historian, and his 'Handlyng Synne' is historically more valuable than his chronicle. His importance is entirely literary, but in this department his work is of the first interest. Mr. Oliphant speaks of the 'Handlyng Synne' as 'the work which more than any former one foreshadowed the path that English literature was to tread from that time forward; … it is a landmark worthy of the carefullest study.' In the same spirit Dr. Furnivall speaks of Mannyng as 'a language reformer, who helped to make English flexible and easy.' The extension of the midland dialect, and by this means the creation of literary English, was no doubt aided by Mannyng's writings.
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 132, s.v. 'Bronne;' Hearne's Pref. to Langtoft; Furnivall's Prefaces to Handlyng Synne and the Chronicle; T. L. Kington-Ohphant's Old and Middle English, chap. vi.; Ten Brink's Early English Literature, pp. 297-302, transl. by H. M. Kennedy; Warner's Cat of Dulwich MSS. p. 347.]
MANSEL, CHARLES GRENVILLE (1806–1886), Indian official, born in 1806, was appointed a writer in the East India Company's service on 30 April 1826. He was made assistant to the secretary of the western board of revenue in Bengal on 19 Jan. 1827; registrar and assistant to the magistrate of Agra and officiating collector to the government of customs at Agra on 10 July 1828; acting magistrate of Agra, 1830; joint magistrate and deputy collector of Agra, 15 Nov. 1831; acting magistrate and collector of Agra, 13 March 1832; secretary and superintendent of Agra College in 1834; magistrate and collector of Agra, 2 Nov. 1835; and temporary secretary to the lieutenant-governor in political, general, judicial, and revenue departments, 21 Feb. 1837. From December 1838 to April 1841 he acted as Sudder settlement officer in Agra, and in 1842 published a valuable ‘Report on the Settlement of the District of Agra.’ In 1841 he became deputy accountant-general in Calcutta, and in 1843 one of the civil auditors. From 1844 to 1849 he was on furlough, and on his return to India was appointed a member of the board of administration for the affairs of the Punjáb, under the presidency of Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence [q. v.] In November 1850 he was gazetted the resident at Nagpur, where he remained till 1855, when he retired upon the East India Company's annuity fund. He is chiefly remembered as the junior member of the board to which was entrusted the administration and reorganisation of the Punjáb after its annexation. He died at 7 Mills Terrace, West Brighton, on 19 Nov. 1886.
[Malleson's Recreations of an Indian Official, 1872, p. 41; Edwardes's Life of Sir H. Lawrence, 1872, ii. 136 et seq.; Kaye and Malleson's Indian Mutiny, 1889, i. 37, 55, 61, 126; Sir Richard Temple's Men and Events of my Time in India, 1882, pp. 55, 64; Dodwell and Miles's Bengal Civil Servants, 1839, pp. 312–13; East India Registers, 1826 et seq.; R. Boswell Smith's Life of Lord Lawrence, 1885, i. 246, 318, 319; Times, 25 Nov. 1886, p. 6.]
MANSEL, HENRY LONGUEVILLE (1820–1871), metaphysician, born on 6 Oct. 1820 at the rectory of Cosgrove, Northamptonshire, was the eldest son and fourth of the eight children (six daughters and two sons) of Henry Longueville Mansel (1783–1835), rector of Cosgrove, by his wife Maria Margaret, daughter of Admiral Sir Robert Moorsom. The Mansels are said to have been landowners in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire from the time of the Conquest (Historical and Genealogical Account of the Ancient Family of Maunsell, Mansell, Mansel, by William W. Mansell, privately printed in 1850). They lived at Chicheley, Buckinghamshire, for fourteen generations, till in the early years of the seventeenth century a Samuel Maunsell became possessed by marriage of Cosgrove, where the family afterwards lived. John Mansel, a great-grandson of Samuel, became a general, and was killed at the battle of Coteau in Flanders, when serving under the Duke of York. He was leading a brigade of cavalry in a charge which, as his grandson, Henry Longueville, stated in a letter to the 'Times,' 26 Jan. 1855, surpassed the famous charge of the six hundred at Balaclava. General Mansel left four sons, the eldest of whom, John Christopher, retired with the rank of major, and lived at Cosgrove Hall; the second son, Robert, became an admiral; the third, George, died in 1818, as captain in the 25th light dragoons; and Henry Longueville, the youngest, held the family living, built the rectory house, and lived at Cosgrove till his death. Henry Longueville, the son, was brought up at Cosgrove, for which he retained a strong affection through life, and showed early metaphysical promise, asking 'What is me?' in a childish soliloquy. Between the ages of eight and ten he was at a preparatory school kept by the Rev. John Collins at East Farndon, Northamptonshire. On 29 Sept. 1830 he entered Merchant Taylors' School, and was placed in the house of the head-master, J. W. Bellamy. He was irascible, though easily pacified, and cared little for games, but soon showed remarkable powers of concentration and acquisition. He had a very powerful memory, and spent all his pocket-money on books,
