Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/97

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Leslie
91
Leslie

Latin, Dutch, German, and Portuguese translations. The alleged facts are almost entirely fictitious. Monymusk was never in the possession of any of the Leslie family. In the fourth French edition (Rouen, 1660), dedicated to the Earl of Bristol, with a preface by Francis Clifton, an exiled English royalist, there are a number of additions and changes for which no authority is given. No English version was printed in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The jesuit Father Christie declared that ‘all those in our country, Catholics and heretics, who did know him, were scandalised at that first Book.’ The biography has been reproduced within the last thirty years almost as often and in as many different quarters as during the first thirty years of its existence. It was reissued at Modena in 1862. Rocco da Cesinale, in his ‘History of the Capuchin Missions,’ 1872, reprints the life; Dr. Raess, bishop of Strasburg, in his work on ‘Famous Converts to the Roman Church since the Reformation,’ 1873, gives thirty closely printed pages to Leslie, and the Père Richard has devoted to the same subject a handsome volume printed at Lille about 1883. The biography, in its fullest form, made its appearance for the first time in England in ‘The Annals of the Franciscans,’ 1879–81, and it was published in the United States under the title of ‘Count Leslie; or the Triumph of Filial Piety,’ Philadelphia, 1864. More recently Canon Bellesheim, in his ‘Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Schottland,’ and Father Hunter Blair, his translator, have celebrated ‘a life distinguished, even in those troublous times, by trials of no ordinary kind.’ This ‘Legend’ was completely demolished in an article contributed to the ‘Scottish Review’ in July 1891 by Mr. Thomas Graves Law, who soon afterwards communicated to the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society a description of the numerous editions of ‘Il Cappucino Scozzese.’ A drama composed on the basis of the biography by a Capuchin father was published at Rome in 1763, under the title of ‘Il Cappucino Scozzese in Scena.’ The scene is laid at Monymusk, and, after the style of the old miracle plays, Beelzebub and other devils figure in the representation.

An interesting engraved portrait of Leslie is prefixed to most of the editions of his biography.

[Information from Thomas Graves Law, esq., librarian of the Signet Library, Edinburgh; Scottish Review, xviii. 77; Leslie's Historical Records of the Family of Leslie, 1869, iii. 415; Scots Mag. lxiv. 189; Chambers's Biog. Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen, 1835; Stothert's Catholic Mission in Scotland, p. 573.]

T. C.

LESLIE, HENRY (1580–1661), bishop of Down and Connor, eldest son of James Leslie and his wife, Jean Hamilton of Evandale, was born at Leslie Fife in 1580. The father, who appears to have been a Roman catholic, was the second surviving son of George, fourth earl of Rothes, by his wife, Agnes Somerville. Henry Leslie was educated at Aberdeen, and went to Ireland in 1614, where he was ordained priest 8 April 1617. He became prebendary of Connor in 1619, and rector of Muckamore in 1622, in which year he was selected by Primate Hampton to preach at Drogheda on Whit Sunday before the royal commissioners. The sermon was printed next year at Hampton's request, as 'a treatise tending to unity.' Leslie dedicated it to the archbishop as 'the first-fruits of my weak engine.' Leslie here proposed that no one should be allowed to go beyond seas for education, and that no popish schoolmaster should be allowed at home; as to the sectaries, Ireland was not much troubled with them. Even in 1698, when presbyterianism was well rooted in Ulster, South almost repeated this latter statement. Leslie did curate's duty at Drogheda from 1622 to 1626. He preached before Charles I at Windsor on 9 July 1625, and at Oxford the same year; and on 30 Oct., being then one of his majesty's chaplains in ordinary, he delivered 'a warning to Israel' in Christ Church, Dublin. The latter sermon is dedicated to lord-deputy Falkland. In 1627 Leslie again preached before the king at Woking, and in the same year he was made dean of Down. In 1628 he was made precentor of St. Patrick's, Dublin, three other livings being added to the dignity (Liber Munerum, pt. v.), and in 1632 he became treasurer also (Cotton, ii. 124, iii. 225), and he seems to have held all these preferments in addition to his deanery.

In the Irish convocation of 1634 Leslie was prolocutor of the Lower House, and came into immediate contact with Lord-deputy Wentworth, whose high-handed proceedings about the articles and canons were probably not disagreeable to him. It is clear that in Irish church politics he belonged to the party of Bramhall rather than to that of Ussher. The chief practical result of the struggle in convocation was that the Thirty-nine Articles were adopted in Ireland, and that the more Calvinistic Irish articles of 1615 were tacitly repealed. Leslie was consecrated bishop of Down and Connor in St. Peter's Church, Drogheda, on 4 Oct. 1635, when he resigned his other preferments, except the prebend of Mullaghbrack in Armagh.