LETHLOBOR (d. 871), Irish king, son of Longsech, first appears in history as victor in battle against the Danes in co. Down in 826. He was then a king of Dal Araidhe, a territory including the southern half of Antrim and the greater part of Down. His rule only extended over the southern half. In 853 he repulsed an invasion of Aodh MacNeill, and during his long life this was the only serious attack made by the greater Ulster upon the lesser. He became king of all lesser Ulster, or Ulidia, and died of a wound 'after a good life' (Ann. R. Eireann, i. 516), in 871. Ulidia was perhaps more subject to attack from without by the Danes, and from the land side by the increasingly powerful Cinel Eoghain and Oirghialla, than any other, and it is clear that Lethlobor was one of the most powerful of the kings of Ulidia. He was succeeded immediately by his son Cennetich as king of Dal Araidhe, and, after an interval, as king of Ulidia.
[Book of Leinster, MS. of the twelfth century, facs. fol. 41, cols. 3 and 5; Annals of Ulster, ed. Hennessy, i. 325, &c.; Annala Rioghachta Eireann, ed. Donovan, i. 516, &c.]
LETTICE, JOHN (1737–1832), poet and divine, son of John Lettice, clergyman, by Mary, daughter of Richard Newcome, rector of Wymington, was born on 27 Dec. 1737 at Rushden in Northamptonshire. His father died when he was fourteen, and left him to the guardianship of a maternal uncle. He was educated at Oakham School, and admitted to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1756, where he graduated B.A. 1761, M.A. 1764, S.T.B. 1771, and S.T.P. 1797. He became a fellow of his college, and in 1764 obtained the Seatonian prize with a poem on the conversion of St. Paul, which was published in 1765, and was reissued in the ‘Musæ Seatonianæ,’ 1772. In March 1765 he spent an evening with Dr. Johnson, who was visiting Cambridge. In 1768 he accompanied Sir Robert Gunning as chaplain and secretary to the British embassy at Copenhagen, was present at the palace revolution in 1772, and subsequently visited other parts of the continent. In 1785 he was presented by his college to the living of Peasmarsh (riding of Hastings, Sussex), in 1799 he was tutor to the Beckford family, and on 21 Feb. 1804 was nominated to the prebend of Seaford in the church of Chichester, both of which preferments he held till his death on 18 Oct. 1832. In his later years he was chaplain to the Duke of Hamilton. He was greatly respected by his parishioners, who erected a monument to his memory. Lettice married, first, a daughter of John Newling, an alderman of Cambridge; she died in January 1788: secondly, on 25 May 1788, a daughter of Dr. Hinckley of the parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, city of London.
Lettice published, apart from sermons and the Seatonian poem: 1. ‘Letters on a Tour through various parts of Scotland in 1792,’ London, 1794. 2. ‘A Plan for the safe Removal of Inhabitants not Military from Towns and Villages on the coasts of Great Britain in case of the threatened Invasion,’ London, 1803. 3. ‘The Village Catechist’ (addressed to the inhabitants of Peasmarsh), 1803. 4. ‘Fables for the Fireside’ (dedicated to the Marchioness of Douglas and Clydesdale), London, 1812. 5. ‘Suggestions on Clerical Eloquence,’ London, 1822. He contributed articles on Scottish biography, which were originally intended as an appendix to the work numbered 1 above, to the ‘European Magazine’ for 1794–5. He also translated (with Thomas Martyn) ‘The Antiquities of Herculaneum,’ from the Italian (only one vol. published, London, 1773), and ‘The Immortality of the Soul,’ a poem, from the Latin of Isaac Hawkins Browne the elder [q. v.], Cambridge, 1795.
[Didot's Nouvelle Biog.; Gent. Mag. 1788, pt. ii. p. 648, 1789 pt. i. p. 466, 1832 pt. i. pp. 477–9; Nichols's Lit. Ill. vi. 141 sq., vii. 48 sq., viii. 372; Graduati Cantabr.; Lettice's pref. to his Suggestions on Clerical Eloquence; Horsfield's Sussex; Watt's Bibl. Brit. ]
LETTOU, JOHN (fl. 1480), printer, was the first printer who set up a printing-press in the city of London. He appears to have been of foreign extraction. His type, which is of peculiar excellence, so much resembles that of M. Moravus, a printer of Naples, that it is possible that Lettou learnt printing there. He printed in 1480, three years after Cotton set up his press in Westminster, an indulgence of Sixtus IV issued by John Kendall [see under Kendall, John, d. 1485], of which at least two editions are known. In the same year he printed, at the expense of William Wilcock, an edition by Thomas Penketh of Antonius Andreæ ‘Quæstiones super xii. libros Metaphysicæ.’ In 1481 Lettou printed, also at Wilcock's expense, an edition of Thomas Wallensis's commentary on the Psalms. About the same time he entered into partnership with William de Machlinia [q. v.], with new type, and they printed five law-books, including an edition of Littleton's ‘Tenures;’ a later edition of this work (1485?) bears the name of Machlinia alone as a printer, so that Lettou probably died or ceased printing about 1483. From the colophon to the first edition of the
