English antiquary, born at Rodmarton, England, on the 28th of April 1762; received his A.M. from Oxford in 1785; entered the Church of England as curate of Putney in 1790, and became rector of Rodmarton in 1804. He gathered an enormous amount of material for antiquarian histories of the various counties in Great Britain. One of his works he completed and published in five volumes, under the title of The Environs of London, being an historical account of the towns, villages and hamlets within twelve miles of that capital (1792–1800). His more ambitious work, Magna Britannia, being a concise topographical account of the several counties of Great Britain (6 vols., 4to, 1806–22), only reached, in alphabetical order, the county of Derby; the documents collected are preserved in the British Museum, forming 64 huge manuscript volumes. He died at Rodmarton on the 3rd of January 1834.
His son, General Sir Daniel Lysons, was born at Rodmarton in 1816, entered the army from Shrewsbury School in 1834, and served through the Canadian rebellion of 1838–39; became captain in a West India regiment in 1841; served throughout the Crimean War, and often was mentioned in dispatches; was wounded severely at the final assault on the Redan; commanded a brigade to the end of the war. In 1861, after the Trent affair, he was sent to Canada to reorganize the militia. After serving at Malta and at Aldershot, he was appointed quartermaster-general of the forces in 1876; grand cross of the Bath (1886); general (1879); constable of the Tower of London (1890). He died in 1898.
A brother of the first Daniel, Samuel Lysons, was also a distinguished antiquary. He was born at Rodmarton on the 17th of May 1763. Besides assisting his brother in his work, he published works on British antiquities. He was called to the bar in 1798; was keeper of the records in the London Tower in 1803, and wrote Reliquiæ Britannico-Romanæ, with figures of Roman antiquities discovered in various parts of England (folio, with 156 colored plates, 1813–17); The History and Antiquities of Devonshire (2 vols., 4to, 1822). He died in London on the 29th of June 1819.
