to the ceiling. The New English Dictionary points out a possible source of the word in Dan. lad, meaning apparently a supporting framework, found in the name of the turning-lathe, drejelad, and also in savelad, saw-bench, vaeverlad, loom, &c. (2) One of five, formerly six, districts containing three or more hundreds, into which the county of Kent was divided. Though the division survives, it no longer serves any administrative purpose. It was formerly a judicial division, the court of the lathe being superior to that of the hundred. In this it differs from the rape (q.v.) of Sussex, which was a geographical rather than an administrative division. In O. Eng. the word was laéð, the origin of which is doubtful. The New English Dictionary considers it almost certainly identical with O. Norse lad, landed possessions, territory, with a possible association in meaning with such words as leið, court, mótlaeaða, attendance at a meeting or moot, or with Mod. Dan. laegd, a division of the country for military purposes.
LATHROP, FRANCIS (1849–1909), American artist, was born at sea, near the Hawaiian Islands, on the 22nd of June 1849, being the great-grandson of Samuel Holden Parsons, and the son of George Alfred Lathrop (1819–1877), who for some time was United States consul at Honolulu. He was a pupil of T. C. Farrar (1838–1891) in New York, and studied at the Royal academy of Dresden. In 1870–1873 he was in England, studying under Ford Madox Brown and Burne-Jones, and working in the school of William Morris, where he devoted particular attention to stained glass. Returning to America in 1873, he became known as an illustrator, painted portraits, designed stained glass, and subsequently confined himself to decorative work. He designed the chancel of Trinity church, Boston, and decorated the interior of Bowdoin college chapel, at Brunswick, Maine, and several churches in New York. The Marquand memorial window, Princeton chapel, is an example of his work in stained glass. His latest work was a series of medallions for the building of the Hispanic-American society in New York. He was one of the charter members of the Society of American Artists, and became an associate of the National Academy of Design, New York, of which also William L. Lathrop (b. 1859) an artist who is to be distinguished from him, became a member in 1907. He died at Woodcliff, New Jersey, on the 18th of October 1909.
His younger brother, George Parsons Lathrop (1851–1898), born near Honolulu on the 25th of August 1851, took up literature as a profession. He was an assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly in 1875–1877, and editor of the Boston Courier in 1877–1879. He was one of the founders (1883) of the American copyright league, was prominent in the movement for Roman Catholic summer schools, and wrote several novels, some verse and critical essays. He was the author of A Study of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1876), and edited the standard edition (Boston, 1883) of Hawthorne’s works. In 1871 he married in London the second daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne—Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (b. 1851). After his death Mrs Lathrop devoted herself entirely to charity. She was instrumental in establishing (1896) and subsequently conducted St Rose’s free home for cancer in New York City. In 1900 she joined the Dominican order, taking the name of Mother Mary Alphonsa and becoming superioress of the Dominican community of the third order; and she established in 1901 and subsequently conducted this order’s Rosary Hill home (for cancerous patients) at Hawthorne, N.Y. She published a volume of poems (1888); Memories of Hawthorne (1897); and, with her husband, A Story of Courage: Annals of the Georgetown Convent of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1894).
LATIMER, HUGH (c. 1490–1555), English bishop, and one of the chief promoters of the Reformation in England, was born at Thurcaston, Leicestershire. He was the son of a yeoman, who rented a farm “of three or four pounds by year at the uttermost.” Of this farm he “tilled as much as kept half a dozen men,” retaining also grass for a hundred sheep and thirty cattle. The year of Latimer’s birth is not definitely known. In the Life by Gilpin it is given as 1470, a palpable error, and possibly a misprint for 1490.[1] Foxe states that at “the age of fourteen years he was sent to the university of Cambridge,” and as he was elected fellow of Clare in 1509, his year of entrance was in all likelihood 1505. Latimer himself also, in mentioning his conversion from Romanism about 1523, says that it took place after he was thirty years of age. According to Foxe, Latimer went to school “at the age of four or thereabout.” The purpose of his parents was to train him up “in the knowledge of all good literature,” but his father “was as diligent to teach him to shoot as any other thing.” As the yeomen of England were then in comparatively easy circumstances, the practice of sending their sons to the universities was quite usual; indeed Latimer mentions that in the reign of Edward VI., on account of the increase of rents, the universities had begun wonderfully to decay. He graduated B.A. in 1510 and M.A. in 1514. Before the latter date he had taken holy orders. While a student he was not unaccustomed “to make good cheer and be merry,” but at the same time he was a punctilious observer of the minutest rites of his faith and “as obstinate a Papist as any in England.” So keen was his opposition to the new learning that his oration on the occasion of taking his degree of bachelor of divinity was devoted to an attack on the opinions of Melanchthon. It was this sermon that determined his friend Thomas Bilney to go to Latimer’s study, and ask him “for God’s sake to hear his confession,” the result being that “from that time forward he began to smell the word of God, and forsook the school doctors and such fooleries.” Soon his discourses exercised a potent influence on learned and unlearned alike; and, although he restricted himself, as indeed was principally his custom through life, to the inculcation of practical righteousness, and the censure of clamant abuses, a rumour of his heretical tendencies reached the bishop of Ely, who resolved to become unexpectedly one of his audience. Latimer, on seeing him enter the church, boldly changed his theme to a portrayal of Christ as the pattern priest and bishop. The points of comparison were, of course, deeply distasteful to the prelate, who, though he professed his “obligations for the good admonition he had received,” informed the preacher that he “smelt somewhat of the pan.” Latimer was prohibited from preaching in the university or in any pulpits of the diocese, and on his occupying the pulpit of the Augustinian monastery, which enjoyed immunity from episcopal control, he was summoned to answer for his opinions before Wolsey, who, however, was so sensible of the value of such discourses that he gave him special licence to preach throughout England.
At this time Protestant opinions were being disseminated in England chiefly by the surreptitious circulation of the works of Wycliffe, and especially of his translations of the New Testament. The new leaven had begun to communicate its subtle influence to the universities, but was working chiefly in secret and even to a great extent unconsciously to those affected by it, for many were in profound ignorance of the ultimate tendency of their own opinions. This was perhaps, as regards England, the most critical conjuncture in the history of the Reformation, both on this account and on account of the position in which Henry VIII. then stood related to it. In no small degree its ultimate fate seemed also to be placed in the hands of Latimer. In 1526 the imprudent zeal of Robert Barnes had resulted in an ignominious recantation, and in 1527 Bilney, Latimer’s most trusted coadjutor, incurred the displeasure of Wolsey, and did humiliating penance for his offences. Latimer, however, besides possessing sagacity, quick insight into character, and a ready and formidable wit which thoroughly disconcerted and confused his opponents, had naturally a distaste for mere theological discussion, and the truths he was in the habit of inculcating could scarcely be controverted, although, as he stated them, they were diametrically contradictory of prevailing errors both in
- ↑ The only reasons for assigning an earlier date are that he was commonly known as “old Hugh Latimer,” and that Bernher, his Swiss servant, states incidentally that he was “above threescore and seven years” in the reign of Edward VI. Bad health and anxieties probably made him look older than his years, but under Edward VI. his powers as an orator were in full vigour, and he was at his book winter and summer at two o’clock in the morning.
