Lambe

LAMBE. [See also LAMB.]

LAMBE, JOHN (d. 1628), astrologer, seems to have belonged to Worcestershire. In youth he was tutor in English to gentlemen's sons, and afterwards studied medicine, but soon fell to other mysteries, as telling of fortunes, helping of divers to lost goods, shewing to young people the faces of their husbands or wives that should be in a crystal glass,' and the like. While practising his magical arts at Tardebigg, Worcestershire, he was indicted early in 1608 for having, on 16 Dec. 1607, practised 'execrable arts to consume the body and strength of Th. Lo. W.,' apparently Thomas, sixth lord Windsor of Bromsgrove. He was found guilty, but judgment was suspended, and he soon gained his liberty. In May 1608 he was residing at Hindlip, Worcestershire, and on the 13th of the month was arraigned at the assize on a charge of having invoked and entertained' certain evil and impious spirits.' It was proved that he caused apparitions to proceed from a crystal glass, and prophesied death and disaster with fatal success. He was again convicted and was imprisoned in Worcester Castle. It was asserted that after his second trial the high sheriff, foreman of jury, and divers others of the justices gentlemen then present of the same jury died within a fortnight.' The local authorities consequently petitioned for his removal to King's Bench prison in London. He was taken thither, and was apparently kept there in easy confinement for some fifteen years. His fame as an astrologer rapidly spread through London, and he was allowed to receive his numerous clients in the prison. On 10 June 1623 he was indicted on a charge of seducing, in the King's Bench, Joan Seager,

VOL. XXXII.

a girl of eleven, and although he was found guilty he was pardoned and released.

Lambe doubtless owed this lenient treatment to the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, the king's favourite. Buckingham and his mother had been attracted by Lambe's popular reputation, and Buckingham had consulted him about 1622 respecting the insanity of his brother, Sir John Villiers, viscount Purbeck. Thenceforth Buckingham was a constant client of Lambe, and the doctor,' as he was called, shared the growing unpopularity of his patron. On Monday, 12 June 1626, London was startled by a fearful storm of wind and rain, and a mist hung over the Thames, in which the superstitious discerned many mystical shapes. Lambe appeared on the river during the day, and to his art of conjuring' the meteorological disturbances were attributed (RUSHWORTH, Hist. Coll. i. 391). When Sir John Eliot and his friends were attacking Buckingham in parliament early in 1628, ballads were sung about the London streets, in which Lambe's evil influence over the duke was forcibly insisted upon, and the doctor' was charged with employing magical charms to corrupt chaste women so that they might serve the duke's pleasure. The populace was excited by such reports, and on Friday, 23 June 1628, as he was leaving the Fortune Theatre in Finsbury, Lambe was attacked with stones and sticks by a mob of apprentices, who denounced him as the duke's devil.' He hurried towards the city, appealing to some sailors on the way to protect him. He reached Moor Gate in safety, but the crowd pursued him through Coleman Street to the Old Jewry, and his efforts to seek refuge in an inn and in a lawyer's house proved of no avail. Nearly beaten to death, he was

B

siastical jurisdiction within the county of Leicester during the suspension of Bishop Williams. On 26 Jan. 1639-40 he was appointed chancellor and keeper of the great seal to Queen Henrietta Maria. He was one of the first to suffer the vengeance of the Long parliament. The parishioners of Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire, whom he had compelled to maintain two organs and an organist at a cost of 157. a year, petitioned for redress, and on 1 Feb. 1640-1 Lambe was summoned to appear before a committee of the House of Commons to answer the charge. He made default, was sent for 'as a delinquent,' and on 22 Feb. was produced at the bar in extremity of sickness both of body and mind.' He made formal submission on 6 March, and was released on bail. At the same time he was harassed by proceedings in the House of Lords by the widow of one of the churchwardens of Colchester, whom he had excommunicated in 1635 for refusing to rail in the altar, and by a certain Walter Walker, whom he had unlawfully deprived of the office of commissary of Leicester. The house found both charges proved, and awarded 1007. to the widow and 1,250l. to Walker. It was even contemplated to impeach him along with Laud (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1640-1, p. 479). He fled to Oxford, where he was incorporated on 9 Dec. 1643. His property was sequestrated (Commons' Journal, iii. 149). He died according to Wood (Fasti Oxon. ii. 58) in the beginning of the year 1647. Lambe had two daughters, both of rare beauty, one of whom married Dr. Robert Sibthorpe [q. v.]; the other, Barbara, was second wife of Basil Feilding, afterwards earl of Denbigh [q. v.]

[Baker's Hist. of St. John's Coll. Cambridge, ed. Mayor, p. 520; Coote's Civilians; Petyt's Misc. Parl. pp. 161 et seq.; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1619-23 p. 280, 1628-9 p. 445, 1633-4 pp. 155, 246, 337, 1634-5 pp. 215, 523, 1637 pp. 335, 399, 1639 p. 452, 1639-40 p. 379, 1640-1 pp. 282, 456-7, 479; Laud's Works, v. 546; Rushworth's Hist. Coll. i. 420; Whitelocke's Mem. p. 8; Cases in the Courts of Star-chamber and High Commission (Camd. Soc.), pp. 221, 254; Coll. Top. et Gen. vii. 365; Collins's Peerage (Brydges), iii. 274; Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. App.; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. iii. 550.]

J. M. R. LAMBE, ROBERT (1712-1795), author, the son of John Lambe, mercer, was born at Durham in 1712. He was admitted a sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, 13 April 1728, and graduated B.A. in 1733-4. Taking holy orders, he was successively a minor canon of Durham Cathedral, perpetual curate of South Shields, and from 1747 vicar of Norham

in Northumberland. He was of eccentric disposition. Suddenly determining to marry Philadelphia Nelson, the daughter of a Durham carrier, whom he had seen only once, and that many years before, he sent a proposal to her by letter, inviting her to meet him on Berwick pier, and bidding her carry a tea-caddy under her arm for purposes of identification. On the appointed day, owing to his habitual absent-mindedness, he failed to meet her, but the marriage took place on 11 April 1755. He died at Edinburgh in 1795, and was buried in Eyemouth churchyard, Berwick-on-Tweed. His wife had died in 1772. A daughter, Philadelphia, married Alexander Robertson of Prenderguest in Berwickshire; two sons died young.

Lambe wrote 'The History of Chess,' London, 1764; another edition, 1765. His chief work, however, was 'An Exact and Circumstantial History of the Battle of Flodden, in verse, written about the time of Queen Elizabeth,' Berwick, 1774, 8vo; Newcastle, 1809, 8vo. This is said to be published from a manuscript in the possession of John Askew of Pallingsburn, Northumberland; the notes, especially those on etymology, are numerous and very curious. Lambe was also the author of the ballad 'The Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh,' which Hutchinson thought ancient, and inserted in his History of Northumberland.' Percy, in the preface to his 'Reliques,' mentions Lambe as one who had been of service to him.

[Notes and Queries, 5th ser. iv. 308, 392, 418, 492, 520, v. 178, x. 337, xii. 356; Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vii. 391-3; Child's Ballads, i. 281.] W. A. J. A.

LAMBE or LAMB, THOMAS (d. 1686), philanthropist, and sometime nonconformist, was born in Colchester. He could not have been, as Brook thinks possible, the Thomas Lamb who became vicar of South Benfleet, Essex, on 23 July 1641. On 6 Feb. 1640, when he was already married and had eight children, he was brought up, at Laud's instance, to the Star-chamber from Colchester, with Francis Lee, on a charge of preaching to a separatist congregation there, and on suspicion of having administered the sacraments. He was committed to the Fleet, and suffered several imprisonments. At Whitsuntide 1640 he and another gave information to John Langley, mayor of Colchester, of a suspected plot to fire the town by 'two Irishmen.' He gained his liberty, through his wife's intercession, on 25 June 1640, on giving a bond not to preach, baptise, or frequent any conventicle. He was brought up on his bond by order of 15 Oct. 1640, but seems to have been finally released by the Long parliament

soon after. From a letter written on 12 Aug. 1658 by his wife, Barbara Lambe, to Richard Baxter, it appears that in 1640 or 1641 he joined the congregation of John Goodwin [q. v.] at St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, London, was afterwards ordained an elder of Goodwin's congregational church, and became an active preacher. He was then a soapboiler, carrying on business in Bell Alley, Coleman Street, and preached there, as well as in parish churches on occasion. He also travelled into Essex 'to make disciples.' Henry Denne [q. v.] joined his meeting at Bell Alley in 1643. On 5 Nov. 1644 he preached universal redemption (in Goodwin's sense) at St. Benedict's, Gracechurch. By this time he had rejected infant baptism without as yet becoming an adult baptist. He encouraged female preachers, notably one Mrs. Attaway, 'the mistress of all the she-preachers in Coleman Street.' In 1645 he was brought before the lord mayor for unlicensed preaching, and imprisoned for a short time by order of a committee of parliament. Edwards, who calls him 'one Lam,' gives an odd account of a public disputation at the Spital in January 1646, between Robert Overton [q. v.] and Lambe and others, on the immortality of the soul. The discussion had been prohibited by the lord mayor, whom Lambe was at first inclined to obey. In February 1650 he was an importer of corn by way of Exeter to London; in July he was engaged in the French trade. He wrote one of the 'hyms or spiritual songs' sung by Goodwin's congregation on 24 Oct. 1651, after the battle of Worcester, and published by Goodwin.

It was not till about 1653 that the arguments of William Allen, derived from Samuel Fisher (1605-1665) [q. v.], brought him to belief in the necessity of adult baptism. For a short time he remained in communion with Goodwin, but soon seceded with Allen and some twenty others, who met as a particular baptist church in Bell Alley. In 1658 Lambe and Allen had increased their following by about one hundred. Lambe was now living in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great; his church, or part of it, met in Lothbury. He was probably the Thomas Lambe or Lamb who was appointed by the navy commissioners in May 1658 as minister of the Nantwich, on a certificate signed by Peter Sterry [q. v.] and two others. Meanwhile Fisher's secession to quakerism had caused a reaction in his mind; before the end of 1657 he began to think of retracing his steps; a correspondence with Baxter in 1658 and 1659, begun by his wife and continued by himself and Allen, convinced him of his error in leaving Goodwin. Lambe and Allen dissolved their baptist

church, and had a meeting with the most moderate pastors of the rebaptised churches,' to consult about a wider basis of church membership. Baxter supplied terms of agreement, but the negotiations were interrupted by the Restoration. Lambe signed the baptist protestation against Venner's insurrection in January 1661.

Lambe and Allen both returned as lay members to the established church. Lambe subsequently dated his return from 1658, but Baxter says they became more vehement against separation than any of the conforming clergy. Lambe made a 'publick profession of repentance,' and succeeded in bringing many of his followers with him to the established church. According to Crosby he died about 1672. Crosby, however (who seems unacquainted with the facts presented in the appendix to 'Reliquiæ Baxterianæ' and in Lucas's sermon), erroneously tries to make out that Lambe of Bell Alley and Lambe who conformed were different persons. 'Mr. Lamb, Bell Alley, Coleman Street,' appears in the Catalogue of the Names of the Merchants' of 1677; in 1679 Baxter published his Nonconformist's Plea for Peace,' in reply to Lambe's attack on nonconformist preachers.

In later life he was remarkable for the fervour of his personal religion, as well as for his philanthropic work. He was an organiser of charity, contributing largely from his own means, and distributing the bounty of others. Several hundreds of prisoners' were by his means set free, and the internal arrangements of prisons improved in consequence of his exertions. He was interested also in the religious education of children. So extensive were his charitable operations that he was continually throng'd by flocks of his clients (as he called them).' He declined to resort to the country for his health, saying, 'What shall my poor then do ?' When too infirm to give personal supervision to his charitable schemes, he employed an agent for the purpose. He died at an advanced age in 1686. His funeral sermon was preached on 23 July by Richard Lucas, D.D. [q. v.], then vicar of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, who speaks of him as his 'dear friend.' One of his sons, Isaac Lamb, was a particular baptist minister who signed the confession of faith issued by that body in 1688. Another son, John Lambe, was appointed vicar of Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, in May 1673, and was living in 1706.

Lambe published: 1. The Fountain of Free Grace Opened,' &c., 8vo (CROSBY). 2. A Treatise of Particular Predestination,' &c., 1642, 8vo. 3. 'The Unlawfulness of

4to.

Infant Baptisme,' &c., 1644 (ANGUS). 4. 'The Anabaptists Groundwork... found false. Whereunto one T. L. hath given his Answers,' &c., 1644, 4to. 5. The Summe of a Conference. betweene J. Stalham and ... T. Lamb,' &c., 1644, 4to. 6. Truth prevailing against... J. Goodwin,' &c., 1655, 7. Absolute Freedom from Sin,' &c., 1656, 4to (against Goodwin's theology; dedicated to the Lord Protector). Lucas refers to his 'two excellent treatises... for the disabusing those of the separation;' one of these was: 8. 'A Fresh Suit against Independency,' &c.(mentioned in preface to Allen's Works'); 'a catechism of his own composing' which he used in his charitable work.

also a

[Cal. of State Papers, Dom. 1640, 1641, 1650, 1651, 1652, 1653, 1655, 1658; Edwards's Gangræna, 1646, i. 124 sq. (2nd edit.), ii. 17 sq.; Lucas's Funeral Sermon, 1686; Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, 1696, i. 180 sq., iii. 180, App. 51 sq.; Works of William Allen, 1707; Crosby's Hist. of English Baptists, 1738-40, iii. 55 sq.; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1808, ii. 430 sq., 445 sq.; Brook's Lives of the Puritans, 1813, iii. 461 sq.; Wood's Condensed Hist. of General Baptists [1847], pp. 109, 121 (erroneously treats Lambe as a general baptist); Records of Fenstanton (Hanserd Knollys Soc.), 1854, pp. vii, 153; Confessions of Faith (Hanserd Knollys Soc.), 1854, p. 171; Barclay's Inner Life of Rel. Societies of the Commonwealth, 1876, p. 157; London Directory of 1677, 1878; Urwick's Nonconformity in Herts, 1884, p. 474; Angus's Early Baptist Authors, January 1886.] A. G. LAMBE, WILLIAM (1495-1580), London merchant and benefactor, son of William Lambe, was born at Sutton Valence, Kent, in 1495. According to the statement of Abraham Fleming, his contemporary biographer, Lambe came from a mean estate in the country to be a gentleman of the Chapel Royal to Henry VIII. He was admitted a freeman of the Clothworkers' Company in 1568, and served the office of master in 1569-70. In early life he lived in London Wall, next to the ancient hermitage chapel of St. James's, belonging to the abbey of Gerendon in Leicestershire. Two monks of this community served the chapel as chaplains. A well belonging to them supplied its name to the adjoining Monkwell Street. Through his influence with the king Lambe purchased this chapel at the dissolution, by letters patent dated 30 March 34 Henry VIII (1542), and bequeathed it with his house, lands, and tenements, to the value of 301. yearly, to the Company of Clothworkers. Out of this he directed that a minister should be engaged to perform divine service in his chapel every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday throughout the year, and to preach four

sermons yearly before the members of the company, who were to attend in their gowns. The company were also to provide clothing for twenty-four poor men and women, and received 41. yearly from the trust for their pains. Lambe's chapel, with the almshouses adjoining, was pulled down in 1825, and in 1872, under an act of 35 & 36 Vict. cap. 154, the chapel was finally removed to Prebend Square, Islington, where the present church of St. James's, of the foundation of William Lambe, was erected in its stead. At the west end of the church is a fine bust of the

founder in his livery gown, with a purse in one hand and his gloves in the other. It bears the date 1612, and was removed from the chapel in London Wall.

Lambe also built at his own expense a conduit in Holborn, and provided 120 pails to enable poor women to gain a living by selling water. He also left an annuity of 67. 138. 4d. to the Stationers' Company, to be distributed to the poor in St. Faith's parish, besides other benefactions to St. Giles's, Cripplegate, Christ's and St. Thomas's Hospitals, and the city prisons. For his native town of Sutton Valence he established in 1578, at his own expense, a free grammar school for the education of youth, providing a yearly allowance of 201. for the master and 107. for the usher, besides a good house and garden for the accommodation of the former. He also erected in the village of Town Sutton six almshouses, with an orchard and gardens, for the comfort of six poor inhabitants of that parish, and allotted the sum of 27. to be paid to each of them yearly, entrusting the Company of Clothworkers with the estates and direction of these charities.

He died 21 April 1580, and was buried in the church of St. Faith under St. Paul's. His tomb, which was destroyed with the church of St. Faith in the fire of London, bore a brass plate with figures of himself in armour and his three wives. His epitaph is printed by Dugdale (History of St. Paul's, 1818, p. 77). The names of his wives were Joan, Alice, and Joan. The last survived him, and was buried in St. Olave's Church, Silver Street.

Lambe was a strong adherent of the reformed religion and a friend of Dean Nowell and John Foxe. He was deservedly esteemed for his piety and benevolence, and, according to his biographer, hath bene seene and marked at Powle's crosse to haue continued from eight of the clocke until eleuen, attentiuely listening to the Preachers voice, and to haue endured the ende, being weake and aged, when others both strong and lustie went away.'