wrongs and calamities of his countrymen.' Having obtained from the pope a bull confirming the rights and jurisdiction of the archiepiscopal see of Dublin, and also the appointment of papal legate, he returned to Dublin and resumed his functions. On one occasion he sent 140 clerics to Rome on a charge of incontinence. Dr. Lanigan attributes the misconduct of so many to the evil example of the Anglo-Norman clergy, but a more reasonable explanation is that their guilt was merely that of marrying. For the marriage of the clergy, permitted in the old Irish church, still prevailed, and did not cease for some centuries. In 1180 Laurence once more undertook the office of ambassador from King Roderic to Henry, and proceeded to England for the purpose, accompanied by a son of Roderic who was to be left as a hostage. But Henry, incensed at his proceedings in the Lateran council, refused to listen to him, and gave orders that he was not to return to Ireland. Some time after, the king having gone to France, Laurence determined to follow him, hoping that he would relent; but on his arrival at Abbeville on the Somme, he was seized with fever. He would not rest there, but hastened on to Eu, where a few days after he died on 14 Nov. 1180. His love for his own nation was the ruling passion of his life. Just before his death, speaking in Irish, he lamented the sad state of his countrymen now about to lose their pastor. 'Ah, foolish and senseless people,' he said, 'what are you now to do? Who will cure your misfortunes? Who will heal you?' He was buried in the church of Notre-Dame at Eu, where a side-chapel bore his name, and his relics were afterwards placed over the high altar in a silver shrine, some of them being afterwards sent to Christ Church, Dublin. In 1226 he was canonised by Honorius III, being the first Irishman who lived and worked in Ireland who received papal canonisation.
[Vita S. Laurentii in Messingham's Florilegiura Insulae Sanctorum, Paris, 1624; Lanigan's Eccl. Hist. iv. 228-44; Giraldus Cambrensis (Rolls Ser.); Leland's Hist. of Ireland, i. 54, 57, 136; King's Hist. of the Primacy of Armagh, p. 92; O'Donovan's Annals of the Four Masters, A.D. 1162, 1167, 1180.]
OTTEBY, JOHN (fl. 1470), Carmelite, and writer on music. [See Hothby.]
OTTER, WILLIAM (1768–1840), bishop of Chichester, born at Cuckney, Nottinghamshire, in 1768, was the fourth son of Edward Otter (1724–1785), vicar of that parish, and of Bolsover, Scarcliffe, and Upper Langwith in Derbyshire. His mother was Dorothy, daughter of John Wright of North Anston in Yorkshire (she died at Cuckney on 13 Feb. 1772). He was admitted into Jesus College, Cambridge, on 23 July 1785; was a Rustat scholar there; graduated B.A., being fourth wrangler, in 1790; proceeded M.A. in 1793, and B.D. and D.D. in 1836. About 1791 he was ordained to the curacy of Helston in Cornwall, and held it, with the mastership of the grammar school, for a few years, being recalled to Cambridge on his election to a fellowship at his college on 8 Feb. 1796.
A man of liberal views, he protested while at Cambridge against the sentence on William Frend [q. v.], and was very intimate with Edward Daniel Clarke [q. v.], the traveller, and with Thomas Robert Malthus [q. v.], the political economist. On 20 May 1799 Otter, Clarke, Malthus, and a young student called Cripps, left Cambridge for Hamburg, and travelled for some time in the north of Europe. They separated at the Wenern Lake in Sweden, Clarke and Cripps proceeding northwards, while Otter and Malthus, as their time was more limited, continued 'leisurely their tour through Sweden, Norway, Finland, and a part of Russia.' He remained at Cambridge as fellow and tutor until 1804, when he was instituted on 30 June to the rectory of Colmworth in Bedfordshire, and married at Leatherhead in Surrey, on 3 July 1804, Nancy Sadleir, eldest daughter and eventual coheiress of William Bruere, formerly secretary to the government and member of the supreme court at Calcutta.
In May 1810 Otter was appointed to the rectory of Sturmer in Essex, and held it, with Colmworth, until the following year, when he obtained the more lucrative rectory of Chetwynd in Shropshire. From 1816 he held, with Chetwynd, the vicarage of Kinlet in Shropshire. He went to Oxford with his wife and family in 1822, as private tutor to the third Lord Ongley (cf. Life of Heber, ii. 56). Under a license of non-residence Otter became the minister of St. Mark's Church, Kennington, in 1825, and in 1830 he was appointed the first principal of King's College at London, thereby vacating all his previous preferments. He continued in charge of that institution until 1836, when he was advanced to the bishopric of Chichester, being consecrated at Lambeth on 2 Oct. The chief acts of Otter's episcopate were the establishment (1838) of the diocesan association for building churches and schools, and for augmenting the incomes of poor livings and curacies; the foundation, conjointly with Dean Chandler, of the theological college (1839); the setting on foot of a training
