Derby;[1] and Fuller,[2] the quaint, but more learned chronicler of the succeeding century, rested satisfied with repeating this information on the authority of Wiever;[3] but apparently without any evidence on which, the assertion of that writer was founded. Caius, however, the president and early annalist of the college, of which Linacre was the founder, in enumerating the promoters of the liberal arts in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, has not forgotten his endowments in favour of medicine; and, in citing him as a benefactor to his art, has recorded the place of his nativity by the epithet, "Cantuariensis"[4] an authority scarcely admitting of question, and sufficiently decisive of the point in debate. Like most families of old and considerable possessions, that of Linacre derived its surname from its place of abode. It boasted of Saxon blood, or at least existed as early as the Saxon dynasty, and was seated, previously to the Norman Conquest, at Linacre, a hamlet, or subordinate manor to that of Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, where it flourished from the time of Lamberte de Linacre, the founder, or first recorded of his stock, to the close of the sixteenth century, when the chief branch became
