George Lily

George Lily (died 1559) was an English Roman Catholic priest, biographer and topographer.

Life

George Lily was born in London, the son of William Lily the grammarian, and his wife Agnes. He may have attended St Paul's School (where his father was High Master), and he became a commoner of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1528. Leaving the university without a degree he travelled to Rome, where he found a patron in Cardinal Pole, and became noted for his erudition. After his return to England he was collated to the prebend of Kentish Town or Cantlers, in St. Paul's Cathedral, on 22 November 1556. Cardinal Pole, to whom he was domestic chaplain, collated him on 13 March 1558 to a canonry in the first prebend of Canterbury Cathedral. He died in 1559 before 29 July, and it is supposed that he was buried near the body of his father in St. Paul's churchyard.

Works

Lily wrote:

• ‘Virorum aliquot in Britannia, qui nostro seculo eruditione, et doctrina clari, memorabilesque fuerunt, Elogia, per Georgium Lilium Britannum, exarata.’ This was dedicated to Paolo Giovio, bishop of Nocera, and printed in Giovio's Descriptio Britanniæ, Scotiæ, Hyberniæ, et Orchadum (Venice, 1548), together with other contributions by Lily, viz.: ‘Nova et Antiqua Locorum Nomina in Anglia et in Scotia’; ‘Anglorum Regum Chronices Epitome,’ down to the year 1547, (reprinted, Frankfort, 1565, with continuation to the accession of Elizabeth in 1558–9; Basle, 1577, &c.; Frankfort, 1614; also in vol. i. of Polydore Vergil's ‘Historia Anglica,’ Douay, 1603); ‘Lancastriæ et Eboracensis de regno contentiones’; ‘Regum Angliæ Genealogia’.

Lily is also credited with ‘Catalogus sive Series Pontificorum et Cæsarum Romanorum,’ and a ‘Life of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester’. John Bale mentions ‘De vitâ, moribus, et fine Thomæ Cranmeri,’ by Lily, in his manuscript notes to the ‘Scriptores Majoris Britanniæ’.

Lily drew the first map of the British Isles (at a reasonably detailed scale) to be printed. It was engraved on two plates and published in Rome in 1546, and was almost certainly intended as a companion-piece to Giovio's Descriptio Britanniæ. It is recognisably a relation of the 14th-century Gough Map, although the orientation has been reversed (West is at the top of the sheet), and many minor improvements have been made. The Scottish coastline, in particular, is considerably more accurate than that on the Gough Map, but Lily's sources for this are not known.

References

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cooper, Thompson‎ (1893). "Lily, George". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 33. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

External links

• Mayer, T.F. (2008) [2004]. "Lily, George (d. 1559)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16663. (subscription required)
• Notes from Lily's Map of Great Britain, 1546
• At www.maphist.com