William Lily

Background

He was born at Odiham, Hampshire, United Kingdom, about 1468.

Education

He studied at Oxford and then went abroad, making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, visiting Rhodes, and studying Classical literature at Rome under Pomponio Laeto and Giovanni Sulpizio. In about 1495 he returned to England, where he studied Greek with his friend Thomas More.

Career

In England he and More made translations from the Greek Anthology into Latin verse, published as Progymnasmata (1518). Lily was the first headmaster of St. Paul's School, London, holding this position from 1512 until his death. Among his friends were William Grocyn, who was his godfather, John Colet, and Thomas Linacre. Lily had fifteen children; his son John was the father of John Lyly, the dramatist, and his son George was chaplain to Reginald Pole.

His works include Rudimenta grammatices, a Latin syntax in English published together with Colet's Aeditio, an accidence; Antibossicon, in Latin, written in collaboration with William Horman and Robert Aldrich in answer to the attacks of another scholar, Robert Whittington; Monita paedogogica, a series of precepts for young scholars, written in elegiac couplets; a translation from Il Sorte, By Lorenzo Spirito da Perugia, an Italian book on fortune for use in parlor games; and Latin verses on various occasions and subjects.

Achievements

• Lily is considered one of the greatest scholars of the early English Renaissance. His various grammatical writings were brought together after his death and issued with additions in about 1540 as the authorized Latin grammar. It became known as Lily's Grammar and remained in use until after the middle of the nineteenth century.

Connections

Lily had fifteen children.

Son:

George Lily

chaplain to Reginald Pole

teacher:

Pomponio Laeto

Grandson:

John Lyly

a dramatist