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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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JOHN LINGARD (1771 - 1851) Lingard was a Roman Catholic priest born in Winchester. In 1794, he was at Tudhoe with a few companions, then at Pontop Hall, and in 1795 took holy orders at Crook Hall (the one now demolished). He taught natural and moral philosophy there and published letters in the Newcastle Courant in 1805, which were later published as Catholic Loyalty Vindicated. He also published The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church (1806, expanded 1845).The establishment at Crook Hall was the forerunner of Ushaw College, to where the students began to move in 1808, and where Robert Southey (q.v.) visited Lingard. Lingard's later life was spent at Hornby near Lancaster, where he wrote A History of England (1819-30). This idealised the Middle Ages and had considerable influence on writers like William Morris and the founders of the Oxford Movement. It was attacked by both Catholics and Protestants; the celebrated historian, Lord Acton, however, said: 'Lingard never gets anything wrong'. In his The Isles: A History (1999), Norman Davies praises Lingard alone among historians, calling his achievement 'colossal'.
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