Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire, abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England which borders Greater London to the south east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north east and Hertfordshire to the east. Buckinghamshire is one of the home counties and towns such as High Wycombe, Amersham and the Chalfonts in the east and southeast of the county are parts of the London commuter belt, forming some of the most densely populated parts of the county. Development in this region is restricted by the Metropolitan Green Belt. Other large settlements include the county town of Aylesbury, Marlow in the south near the Thames and Princes Risborough in the west near Oxford; some areas without direct rail links to London, such as around the old county town of Buckingham and near Olney in the northeast, are much less populous. The largest town is Milton Keynes in the northeast, which with the surrounding area is administered as a unitary authority separately to the rest of Buckinghamshire.
The remainder of the county is administered by Buckinghamshire County Council as a non-metropolitan county, four district councils. In national elections, Buckinghamshire is considered a reliable supporter of the Conservative Party. A large part of the Chiltern Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, runs through the south of the county and attracts many walkers and cyclists from London. In this area older buildings are made from local flint and red brick. Many parts of the county are quite affluent and like many areas around London this has led to problems with housing costs: several reports have identified the market town of Beaconsfield as having among the highest property prices outside London. Chequers, a mansion estate owned by the government, is the country retreat of the incumbent Prime Minister. To the north of the county lies rolling countryside in the Vale of Aylesbury and around the Great Ouse; the Thames forms part of the county’s southwestern boundary. Notable service amenities in the county are Pinewood Film Studios, Dorney rowing lake and part of Silverstone race track on the Northamptonshire border.
Many national companies have offices in Milton Keynes. Heavy industry and quarrying is limited, with agriculture predominating after service industries; the name Buckinghamshire means The district of Bucca's home. Bucca's home refers to Buckingham in the north of the county, is named after an Anglo-Saxon landowner; the county has been so named since about the 12th century. The history of the area predates the Anglo-Saxon period and the county has a rich history starting from the Celtic and Roman periods, though the Anglo-Saxons had the greatest impact on Buckinghamshire: the geography of the rural county is as it was in the Anglo-Saxon period. Buckinghamshire became an important political arena, with King Henry VIII intervening in local politics in the 16th century and just a century the English Civil War was reputedly started by John Hampden in mid-Bucks; the biggest change to the county came in the 19th century, when a combination of cholera and famine hit the rural county, forcing many to migrate to larger towns to find work.
Not only did this alter the local economic situation, it meant a lot of land was going cheap at a time when the rich were more mobile and leafy Bucks became a popular rural idyll: an image it still has today. Buckinghamshire is a popular home for London commuters, leading to greater local affluence; the expansion of London and coming of the railways promoted the growth of towns in the south of the county such as Aylesbury and High Wycombe, leaving the town Buckingham itself to the north in a relative backwater. As a result, most county institutions are now based in the south of the county or Milton Keynes, rather than in Buckingham; the county can be split into two sections geographically. The south leads from the River Thames up the gentle slopes of the Chiltern Hills to the more abrupt slopes on the northern side leading to the Vale of Aylesbury, a large flat expanse of land, which includes the path of the River Great Ouse; the county includes parts of two of the four longest rivers in England.
The River Thames forms the southern boundary with Berkshire, which has crept over the border at Eton and Slough so that the river is no longer the sole boundary between the two counties. The River Great Ouse rises just outside the county in Northamptonshire and flows east through Buckingham, Milton Keynes and Olney; the main branch of the Grand Union Canal passes through the county as do its arms to Slough, Aylesbury and Buckingham. The canal has been incorporated into the landscaping of Milton Keynes; the southern part of the county is dominated by the Chiltern Hills. The two highest points in Buckinghamshire are Haddington Hill in Wendover Woods at 267 metres above sea level, Coombe Hill near Wendover at 260 metres. Quarrying has taken clay for brickmaking and gravel and sand in the river valleys. Flint extracted from quarries, was used to build older local buildings. Several former quarries, now flooded, have become nature reserves; as can be seen from the table, the Vale of Aylesbury and the Borough of Milton Keynes have been identified as growth areas, with a projected population surge of 40,000 in Aylesbury Vale between 2011 and 2026 and 75,000 in Milton Keynes within the same 15 years.
The population of the Borough of Milton Keynes is expected to reach 350,000 by 2031. Buckinghamshire is sub-divided into civil parishes. Today Bucking
Anthony Wood (antiquary)
Anthony Wood, who styled himself Anthony à Wood in his writings, was an English antiquary. Anthony Wood was born in Oxford on 17 December 1632, he was the fourth son of Thomas Wood, BCL of Oxford, his second wife, daughter of Robert Pettie and Penelope Taverner. Wood was sent to New College School in 1641, at the age of twelve was removed to the free Lord Williams's School at Thame, where his studies were interrupted by Civil War skirmishes, he was placed under the tuition of his brother Edward, of Trinity College, and, as he tells us, "while he continued in this condition his mother would alwaies be soliciting him to be an apprentice which he could never endure to heare of". He was entered at Merton College in 1647, made postmaster. In 1652 Wood amused himself with bell-ringing. "Having had from his most tender years an extraordinary ravishing delight in music", he began to teach himself the violin and took his BA examinations. He engaged a music-master and obtained permission to use the Bodleian, "which he took to be the happiness of his life".
He received the MA degree in 1655, in the following year published a volume of sermons by his late brother Edward. Wood began, systematically, to copy monumental inscriptions and to search for antiquities in the city and neighbourhood, he went through the Christ Church registers, "at this time being resolved to set himself to the study of antiquities." Dr John Wallis, the keeper, allowed him free access to the university registers in 1660. Et Antiq. Univ. Oxon", he came to know the Oxford collections of Brian Twyne to which he was indebted, those of the assiduous antiquary Ralph Sheldon. He investigated the muniments of all the colleges, in 1667 made his first journey to London, where he visited William Dugdale, who introduced him into the Cottonian Library, William Prynne showed him the same civility for the Tower records. On 22 October 1669, he was sent for by the delegates of the press, "that whereas he had taken a great deal of paines in writing the Hist. and Antiq. of the Universitie of Oxon, they would for his paines give him an 100 li. for his copie, that he would suffer the book to be translated into Latine".
He accepted the offer and set to work to prepare his English manuscript for the translators, Richard Peers and Richard Reeve, both appointed by Dr Fell, Dean of Christ Church, who undertook the expense of printing. In 1674 appeared Historia, et antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis, handsomely reprinted "e Theatro Sheldoniano" in two folio volumes, the first devoted to the university in general and the second to the colleges. Copies were distributed, university and author received much praise. Wood was disappointed with the Latin translation, Bishop Barlow told a correspondent that "not only the Latine but the history itself is in many things ridiculously false". Despite the carping, Wood's meticulously researched text, with extensive footnotes to original sources, remains a worthy successor to Dugdale's work, his inspiration. In 1678 the university registers, in Wood's custody for eighteen years were removed, as it was feared that he would be implicated in the Popish Plot. To relieve himself from suspicion he took the Oath of Supremacy.
During this time he had been completing his great work, produced by a London publisher in 1691–1692, 2 vols. folio, Athenae Oxonienses: an Exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the University of Oxford from 1500 to 1690, to which are added the Fasti, or Annals for the said time. Wood contemplated publishing a third volume of the Athenae, printed in the Netherlands; the third appeared subsequently as "a new edition, with additions, a continuation by Philip Bliss". The Ecclesiastical History Society proposed to bring out a fourth edition, which stopped at the Life, ed. by Bliss. Bliss's interleaved copy is in the Bodleian. On 29 July 1693 Wood was condemned and fined in the vice-chancellor's court for certain libels against the late Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, he was punished by being banished from the university until he recanted, the offending pages being burnt. The proceedings were printed in a volume of Miscellanies, published by Edmund Curll in 1714.
Wood was attacked by Bishop Burnet in A letter to the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, defended by his nephew Dr Thomas Wood, in a Vindication of the Historiographer, to, added the Historiographer's Answer, reproduced in the subsequent editions of the Athenae. The nephew defended his uncle in An Appendix to the Life of Bishop Seth Ward, 1697. After a short illness Anthony Wood died, was buried in the outer chapel of St John Baptist, in Oxford, where he had superintended the digging of his own grave only a few days before, he was described as "a strong lusty man," of uncouth manners and appearance, not so deaf as he pretended, of reserved and temperate habits, not avaricious and a despiser of honours. He received neither reward from the university which owed so much to his labours, he never married, led a life of self-denial devoted to antiquarian research. Bell-ringing and music were his chief rel
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation, it grew from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge; the two'ancient universities' are jointly called'Oxbridge'. The history and influence of the University of Oxford has made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world; the university is made up of 38 constituent colleges, a range of academic departments, which are organised into four divisions. All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities, it does not have a main campus, its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre.
Undergraduate teaching at Oxford is organised around weekly tutorials at the colleges and halls, supported by classes, lectures and laboratory work provided by university faculties and departments. It operates the world's oldest university museum, as well as the largest university press in the world and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2018, the university had a total income of £2.237 billion, of which £579.1 million was from research grants and contracts. The university is ranked first globally by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings as of 2019 and is ranked as among the world's top ten universities, it is ranked second in all major national league tables, behind Cambridge. Oxford has educated many notable alumni, including 27 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world; as of 2019, 69 Nobel Prize winners, 3 Fields Medalists, 6 Turing Award winners have studied, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals.
Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. The University of Oxford has no known foundation date. Teaching at Oxford existed in some form as early as 1096, but it is unclear when a university came into being, it grew from 1167 when English students returned from the University of Paris. The historian Gerald of Wales lectured to such scholars in 1188 and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland, arrived in 1190; the head of the university had the title of chancellor from at least 1201, the masters were recognised as a universitas or corporation in 1231. The university was granted a royal charter in 1248 during the reign of King Henry III. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled from the violence to Cambridge forming the University of Cambridge; the students associated together on the basis of geographical origins, into two'nations', representing the North and the South.
In centuries, geographical origins continued to influence many students' affiliations when membership of a college or hall became customary in Oxford. In addition, members of many religious orders, including Dominicans, Franciscans and Augustinians, settled in Oxford in the mid-13th century, gained influence and maintained houses or halls for students. At about the same time, private benefactors established colleges as self-contained scholarly communities. Among the earliest such founders were William of Durham, who in 1249 endowed University College, John Balliol, father of a future King of Scots. Another founder, Walter de Merton, a Lord Chancellor of England and afterwards Bishop of Rochester, devised a series of regulations for college life. Thereafter, an increasing number of students lived in colleges rather than in halls and religious houses. In 1333–34, an attempt by some dissatisfied Oxford scholars to found a new university at Stamford, was blocked by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge petitioning King Edward III.
Thereafter, until the 1820s, no new universities were allowed to be founded in England in London. The new learning of the Renaissance influenced Oxford from the late 15th century onwards. Among university scholars of the period were William Grocyn, who contributed to the revival of Greek language studies, John Colet, the noted biblical scholar. With the English Reformation and the breaking of communion with the Roman Catholic Church, recusant scholars from Oxford fled to continental Europe, settling at the University of Douai; the method of teaching at Oxford was transformed from the medieval scholastic method to Renaissance education, although institutions associated with the university suffered losses of land and revenues. As a centre of learning and scholarship, Oxford's reputation declined in the Age of Enlightenment. In 1636 William Laud, the chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, codified the university's statutes. These, to a large extent, remained its gove
All Saints Church, Maidstone
All Saints is a parish church in Maidstone, Kent. It is a Grade I listed building, is described as the grandest Perpendicular style church in Kent, by some, in the whole of England. Founded by Archbishop of Canterbury William Courtenay in 1395 as part of a new College of All Saints, the church replaced an earlier one on the site dedicated to St Mary. Courtenay died in 1396 and the church and college were completed by his successor, Thomas Arundel, between 1396 and 1398. Richard II endowed the college with land and income from the Hospital of St Peter and St Paul in Maidstone and from the parishes of Linton, Farleigh and Crundale; the college was granted the advowsons for the parishes. To cover the cost of building the college, Courtenay obtained a bull to levy a charge of fourpence in the pound on all ecclesiastical revenue raised in his archbishopric; when the college was closed in 1546 following the passing of the Chantries Act, its annual income was valued at £208 6s 2d. The church and the college were separated.
The church became the parish church for the whole of Maidstone and the college's estate was granted to George Brooke, Baron Cobham but was forfeited to the crown in 1603 when his grandson, Henry Brooke, the 11th Baron Cobham, was charged with high treason for his part in the Main Plot against James I. In the reign of Charles I the college became the property of Sir Edward Henden and passed into the family of the Earls of Romney; the church sits in a small churchyard with the River Medway to the west, the remnants of the college, including its gateway, to the south, the Archbishop's Palace to the north-west and the palace's tithe barn to the north-east. The medieval wall on the north and west sides of the churchyard and the Monckton War Memorial in the churchyard are both separately listed as Grade II structures; the church is built of rag-stone in the Perpendicular style with buttressed walls and a crenellated parapet. The tower is 78 feet tall, it had a spire, destroyed by a lightning strike in 1730.
It has a nave six bays long with aisles on the north and south sides with a clerestory running the length of the church. On the south side is a chapel for the use of the Fraternity of Corpus Christi, a local lay community; the Credence and four-seated Sedilla incorporate a monument to the first master of the college, John Wotton. Further monuments exist to Archbishop Courtenay, Lawrence Washington, John Davy and a combined memorial to John Astley, his son Sir John Astley and their wives. Burials in the church include the Astleys and the three Barons Astley of Reading. In the churchyard is the tomb of William Shipley, founder of the Royal Society of Arts; the font is early 17th century and the choir stalls feature medieval misericords. The timber roof was replaced in 1886 to designs by John Loughborough Pearson. Pearson designed screens and the reredos; the church tower has a ring of bells consisting of ten bells ranging from a treble of 5 long cwt 0 qr 26 lb to a tenor of 32 long cwt 0 qr 20 lb.
The bells are rung by the church's bell ringing society. The church clock was manufactured in 1899 by Gillett & Johnston and refurbished in 2007, it strikes the hours using Westminster chimes. The building is on the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register; the church has male and female choir directed by the Director of Liturgical Music. Grade I listed buildings in Maidstone List of ecclesiastical restorations and alterations by J. L. Pearson Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Maidstone: All Saints Image of the medieval stained-glass window in Vestry
Aristotle
Aristotle was a philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, the founder of the Lyceum and the Peripatetic school of philosophy and Aristotelian tradition. Along with his teacher Plato, he is considered the "Father of Western Philosophy", his writings cover many subjects – including physics, zoology, logic, aesthetics, theatre, rhetoric, linguistics, economics and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him, it was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry; as a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. Little is known about his life. Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira in Northern Greece, his father, died when Aristotle was a child, he was brought up by a guardian. At seventeen or eighteen years of age, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven.
Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication; the fact that Aristotle was a pupil of Plato contributed to his former views of Platonism, following Plato's death, Aristotle developed an increased interest in natural sciences and adopted the position of immanent realism. Aristotle's views on physical science profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, their influence extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics. Some of Aristotle's zoological observations found in his biology, such as on the hectocotyl arm of the octopus, were disbelieved until the 19th century.
His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and John Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century He influenced Islamic thought during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher" and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as "The Philosopher", his ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics, such as in the thinking of Alasdair MacIntyre and Philippa Foot. In general, the details of Aristotle's life are not well-established; the biographies written in ancient times are speculative and historians only agree on a few salient points. Aristotle, whose name means "the best purpose" in Ancient Greek, was born in 384 BC in Stagira, about 55 km east of modern-day Thessaloniki.
His father Nicomachus was the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Both of Aristotle's parents died when he was about thirteen, Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. Although little information about Aristotle's childhood has survived, he spent some time within the Macedonian palace, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy, he remained there for nearly twenty years before leaving Athens in 348/47 BC. The traditional story about his departure records that he was disappointed with the Academy's direction after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus, although it is possible that he feared the anti-Macedonian sentiments in Athens at that time and left before Plato died. Aristotle accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. After the death of Hermias, Aristotle travelled with his pupil Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island and its sheltered lagoon.
While in Lesbos, Aristotle married Hermias's adoptive daughter or niece. She bore him a daughter, whom they named Pythias. In 343 BC, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander. Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During Aristotle's time in the Macedonian court, he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest and Aristotle's own attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants". By 335 BC, Aristotle had returned to Athens. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus.
According to the Suda, he had an erômenos, Palaephatus of Abydus. This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BC, is when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works, he wrote many dialogues. Those works that have survived are in treatise form and were not
Thomas Linacre
Thomas Linacre was an English humanist scholar and physician, after whom Linacre College and Linacre House, a boys' boarding house at The King's School, are named. Linacre was more of a scholar than a scientific investigator, it is difficult to judge his practical skill in his profession, but it was esteemed in his own day. He took no part in political or theological questions, but his career as a scholar was characteristic of the critical period in the history of learning through which he lived, he was one of the first Englishmen to study Greek in Italy, brought back to his native country and his own university the lessons of the "New Learning". His teachers were some of the greatest scholars of the day. Among his pupils was one—Erasmus—whose name alone would suffice to preserve the memory of his instructor in Greek, others of note in letters and politics, such as Sir Thomas More, Prince Arthur and Queen Mary I of England. John Colet, William Grocyn, William Lilye and other eminent scholars were his intimate friends, he was esteemed by a still wider circle of literary correspondents in all parts of Europe.
He was born at Brampton, Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, descended from an ancient family recorded in the Domesday Book. He received his early education at the Canterbury Cathedral school, under the direction of William Tilly of Selling, who became prior of Canterbury in 1472, it was from Selling that Linacre must have received his first incentive to the study of Classics. Linacre entered Oxford in about 1480, in 1484 was elected a fellow of All Souls College. Shortly afterwards he visited Italy in the train of Selling, sent by King Henry VII as an envoy to the papal court. Linacre accompanied his patron as far as Bologna. There he became the pupil of Angelo Poliziano, shared the instruction which Poliziano imparted at Florence to the sons of Lorenzo de Medici; the younger of these princes became Pope Leo X, remembered his old companionship with Linacre. Among his other teachers and friends in Italy were Demetrius Chalcondylas, Hermolaus Barbarus, Aldus Romanus the printer of Venice, Nicolaus Leonicenus of Vicenza.
Linacre took the degree of doctor of medicine with great distinction at Padua. On his return to Oxford, full of the learning and imbued with the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, he formed one of the brilliant circle of Oxford scholars, including John Colet, William Grocyn and William Latimer, who are mentioned in the letters of Erasmus. Linacre does not appear to have practised or taught medicine in Oxford. In about 1501, he was called to court as tutor of the young Arthur, Prince of Wales. On the accession of Henry VIII in 1509, he was appointed the king's physician, an office at that time of considerable influence and importance, practised medicine in London, having among his patients most of the great statesmen and prelates of the time, including Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop William Warham and Bishop Fox. After some years of professional activity, Linacre devoted himself to the study of theology and the duties of the priesthood. Around 1509, he received priest's orders as the rector of Merstham, Kent.
Numerous ecclesiastical positions followed, finalising with him obtaining the rectorship of Wigan in 1520, which he held until his death in 1524. His clerical benefices, included the Precentorship of York Minster, his ordination was connected with his retirement from active life. Literary labours, the cares of the foundation which owed its existence chiefly to him, the Royal College of Physicians, occupied Linacre's remaining years; the most important service Linacre conferred upon his own profession and science was the foundation by royal charter of the College of Physicians in London, he was the first president of the new college, which he further aided by bequeathing to it his own house and library. Shortly before his death, Linacre obtained from the king letters patent for the establishment of readerships in medicine at Oxford and Cambridge, placed valuable estates in the hands of trustees for their endowment. Two readerships were founded at Merton College, a lecture St John's College, Cambridge.
The Oxford foundation was revived by the university commissioners in 1856 in the form of the Linacre professorship of anatomy. At St John's College the funds are still in use today. Linacre is listed on a modern monument in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral in London as one of the important graves lost in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Linacre's literary activity was displayed both in pure scholarship and in translation from Greek. In the domain of scholarship he was known by the rudiments of grammar, composed in English, a revised version of, made for the use of the Princess Mary, afterwards translated into Latin by George Buchanan, he wrote a work on Latin composition, De emendata structura Latini sermonis, published in London in 1524 and many times reprinted on the continent of Europe. Linacre's only medical works were his translations, he desired to make the works of Galen accessible to all readers of Latin. What he effected in the case of the first, though not trifling in itself, is inconsiderable as compared with the whole mass of Galen's writings.
The following are the works of Galen translated by Linacre: De sanitate tuenda, Methodus medendi De temper
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 610–611.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 