LINGARD’S “History of England,” which appeared in fourteen volumes between 1819 and 1831, ran through numerous editions during the author’s lifetime, and was translated into French, German, and Italian. Cardinal Wiseman called it the only impartial history of England, and it is valued by students because it is, in fact, the only history which gives the material necessary for an impartial study of the evolution of English civilization during the period when the priests of the Roman Catholic Church were hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors, if they persisted in the attempt to say mass anywhere in England, Scotland, or Wales. Lingard was born at Winchester, England, February 7th, 1771, and educated in the Roman Catholic College at Douay, France. Returning to England he was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in 1795. In 1811 he took up his residence at Hornby, in Lancashire, where he spent the rest of his life in clerical and literary labors. Besides his “History of England” he wrote the “History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church” and a considerable number of controversial tracts and essays. He died at Hornby, July 17th, 1851.