of Rouen. Whilst visiting his diocese, however, he was thrown into prison, and had to pay 3000 pistoles to prevent his being given up to Elizabeth. During the remainder of the reign of Henry III. he lived unmolested, but on the accession of the Protestant Henry IV. he again fell into trouble. In 1590 he was thrown into prison, and had to purchase his freedom at the same expense as before. In 1593 he was made bishop of Coutances in Normandy, and had licence to hold the bishopric of Ross till he should obtain peaceable possession of the former see. He retired to an Augustinian monastery near Brussels, where he died on the 31st of May 1596.
The chief works of Lesley are as follows: A Defence of the Honour of ... Marie, Queene of Scotland, by Eusebius Dicaeophile (London, 1569), reprinted, with alterations, at Liége in 1571, under the title, A Treatise concerning the Defence of the Honour of Marie, Queene of Scotland, made by Morgan Philippes, Bachelar of Divinitie, Piae afflicti animi consolationes, ad Mariam Scot. Reg. (Paris, 1574); De origine, moribus et rebus gestis Scotorum libri decem (Rome, 1578; re-issued 1675); De illustrium feminarum in republica administranda authoritate libellus (Reims, 1580; a Latin version of a tract on “The Lawfulness of the Regiment of Women”: cf. Knox’s pamphlet); De titulo et jure Mariae Scot. Reg., quo regni Angliae successionem sibi juste vindicat (Reims, 1580; translated in 1584). The history of Scotland from 1436 to 1561 owes much, in its earlier chapters, to the accounts of Hector Boece (q.v.) and John Major (q.v.), though no small portion of the topographical matter is first-hand. In the later sections he gives an independent account (from the Catholic point of view) which is a valuable supplement and a corrective in many details, to the works of Buchanan and Knox. A Scots version of the history was written in 1596 by James Dalrymple of the Scottish Cloister at Regensburg. It has been printed for the Scottish Text Society (2 vols., 1888–1895) under the editorship of the Rev. E. G. Cody, O.S.B. A slight sketch by Lesley of Scottish history from 1562 to 1571 has been translated by Forbes-Leith in his Narrative of Scottish Catholics (1885), from the original MS. now in the Vatican.
LESLEY, J. PETER (1819–1903), American geologist, was born
in Philadelphia on the 17th of September 1819. It is recorded by
Sir A. Geikie that “He was christened Peter after his father
and grandfather, and at first wrote his name ‘Peter Lesley, Jr.,’
but disliking the Christian appellation that had been given to
him, he eventually transformed his signature by putting the J.
of ‘Junior’ at the beginning.” He was educated for the ministry
at the university of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1838;
but the effects of close study having told upon his health, he
served for a time as sub-assistant on the first geological survey
of Pennsylvania under Professor H. D. Rogers, and was afterwards
engaged in a special examination of the coal regions.
On the termination of the survey in 1841 he entered Princeton
seminary and renewed his theological studies, at the same time
giving his leisure time to assist Professor Rogers in preparing
the final report and map of Pennsylvania. He was licensed to
preach in 1844; he then paid a visit to Europe and entered on a
short course of study at the university of Halle. Returning to
America he worked during two years for the American Tract
Society, and at the close of 1847 he joined Professor Rogers
again in preparing geological maps and sections at Boston. He
then accepted the pastorate of the Congregational church at
Milton, a suburb of Boston, where he remained until 1851, when,
his views having become Unitarian, he abandoned the ministry
and entered into practice as a consulting geologist. In the course
of his work he made elaborate surveys of the Cape Breton coalfield,
and of other coal and iron regions. From 1855 to 1859
he was secretary of the American Iron Association; for twenty-seven
years (1858–1885) he was secretary and librarian of the
American Philosophical Society; from 1872 to 1878 he was
professor of geology and dean of the faculty of science in the
university of Pennsylvania, and from 1874–1893 he was in charge
of the second geological survey of the state. He then retired
to Milton, Mass., where he died on the 1st of June 1903. He
published Manual of Coal and its Topography (1856); The Iron
Manufacturer’s Guide to the Furnaces, Forges and Rolling Mills
of the United States (1859).
See Memoir by Sir A. Geikie in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. (May 1904); and Memoir (with portrait) by B. S. Lyman, printed in advance with portrait, and afterwards in abstract only in Trans. Amer. Inst. Mining Engineers, xxxiv. (1904) p. 726.
LESLIE, CHARLES (1650–1722), Anglican nonjuring divine,
son of John Leslie (1571–1671), bishop of Raphoe and afterwards
of Clogher, was born in July 1650 in Dublin, and was educated
at Enniskillen school and Trinity College, Dublin. Going to
England he read law for a time, but soon turned his attention
to theology, and took orders in 1680. In 1687 he became
chancellor of the cathedral of Connor and a justice of the peace,
and began a long career of public controversy by responding in
public disputation at Monaghan to the challenge of the Roman
Catholic bishop of Clogher. Although a vigorous opponent of
Roman Catholicism, Leslie was a firm supporter of the Stuart
dynasty, and, having declined at the Revolution to take the oath
to William and Mary, he was on this account deprived of his
benefice. In 1689 the growing troubles in Ireland induced him
to withdraw to England, where he employed himself for the next
twenty years in writing various controversial pamphlets in
favour of the nonjuring cause, and in numerous polemics against
the Quakers, Jews, Socinians and Roman Catholics, and especially
in that against the Deists with which his name is now most
commonly associated. He had the keenest scent for every form
of heresy and was especially zealous in his defence of the sacraments.
A warrant having been issued against him in 1710 for
his pamphlet The Good Old Cause, or Lying in Truth, he resolved
to quit England and to accept an offer made by the Pretender
(with whom he had previously been in frequent correspondence)
that he should reside with him at Bar-le-Duc. After the failure
of the Stuart cause in 1715, Leslie accompanied his patron into
Italy, where he remained until 1721, in which year, having found
his sojourn amongst Roman Catholics extremely unpleasant,
he sought and obtained permission to return to his native country.
He died at Glaslough, Monaghan, on the 13th of April 1722.
The Theological Works of Leslie were collected and published by himself in 2 vols. folio in 1721; a later edition, slightly enlarged, appeared at Oxford in 1832 (7 vols. 8vo). Though marred by persistent arguing in a circle they are written in lively style and show considerable erudition. He had the somewhat rare distinction of making several converts by his reasonings, and Johnson declared that “Leslie was a reasoner, and a reasoner who was not to be reasoned against.” An historical interest in all that now attaches to his subjects and his methods, as may be seen when the promise given in the title of his best-known work is contrasted with the actual performance. The book professes to be A Short and Easy Method with the Deists, wherein the certainty of the Christian Religion is Demonstrated by Infallible Proof from Four Rules, which are incompatible to any imposture that ever yet has been, or that can possibly be (1697). The four rules which, according to Leslie, have only to be rigorously applied in order to establish not the probability merely but the absolute certainty of the truth of Christianity are simply these: (1) that the matter of fact be such as that men’s outward senses, their eyes and ears, may be judges of it; (2) that it be done publicly, in the face of the world; (3) that not only public monuments be kept up in memory of it, but some outward actions be performed; (4) that such monuments and such actions or observances be instituted and do commence from the time that the matter of fact was done. Other publications of Leslie are The Snake in the Grass (1696), against the Quakers; A Short Method with the Jews (1689); Gallienus Redivivus (an attack on William III., 1695); The Socinian Controversy Discussed (1697); The True Notion of the Catholic Church (1703); and The Case Stated between the Church of Rome and the Church of England (1713).
LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT (1794–1859), English genre-painter,
was born in London on the 19th of October 1794. His
parents were American, and when he was five years of age he
returned with them to their native country. They settled in
Philadelphia, where their son was educated and afterwards
apprenticed to a bookseller. He was, however, mainly interested
in painting and the drama, and when George Frederick Cooke
visited the city he executed a portrait of the actor, from recollection
of him on the stage, which was considered a work
of such promise that a fund was raised to enable the young
artist to study in Europe. He left for London in 1811, bearing
introductions which procured for him the friendship of West,
Beechey, Allston, Coleridge and Washington Irving, and was
admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, where he carried
off two silver medals. At first, influenced by West and Fuseli,
he essayed “high art,” and his earliest important subject depicted
Saul and the Witch of Endor; but he soon discovered his true
