Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/258

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for him’ (ib.) The two bishops had a stormy meeting on 8 Oct. 1664, when Lucy told Nicholson that he would not have his clergy oppressed or his officers deprived of their fees (ib. cxlvi. 139), and at last inhibited him from holding visitations in the archdeaconry. The point in dispute was referred to the Bishops of London and St. Asaph, whose award confirmed Lucy's decision. One result of this quarrel was that the right of holding visitations in the diocese of St. David's remained in abeyance, until it was restored within the last thirty years (A. L. Bevan, History of St. David's, pp. 196, 197).

Lucy is accused of having ‘lived in a woful and culpable omission of many of the direct and important as well sacred as other duties of his office’ (A Large Review of the Summary View of the Articles exhibited against the Bishop of St. David's, Robert Ferguson, 1702, p. 22). He is also said to have neglected to hold confirmations in his diocese, and to have connived at the exaction of exorbitant fees (ib.) He certainly filled his cathedral with non-residents, and preferred royalists exclusively to benefices in the diocese (Tanner MSS. cxlvi. 133).

Lucy constantly sent orders to his clergy to instruct the children in the church catechism, and the parents were required to second their efforts; but he admitted to Archbishop Sheldon that ‘their backwardnesse was soe generall that the church censure if used wd involve whole parishes together’ (Lucy to Archbishop Sheldon, 20 Feb. 1672, ib. cxlvi. 138). He complained of the private schools erected by the dissenters, and the energy they displayed in disseminating their doctrines by printed books and by preaching in private houses. The leading men in the large towns countenanced them. ‘Were these greate people,’ Lucy wrote to Archbishop Sheldon (ib. cxlvi. 113), ‘wch maintaine these preachers and scholes, forced to pay such summes to ye amendment of poore vicarages in market townes, I durst say I would make this a happy diocese free from such scandalous schismes.’ Lucy completely failed to check the progress of dissent. During the last five years of his life he was unable to leave his house. He died on 4 Oct. 1677, and was buried in the collegiate church of Brecon. A son, Robert, became registrar of St. David's; another son, Spencer, treasurer; and a third son, Richard, chancellor.

Lucy published: 1. ‘Observations, Censures, and Confutations of divers Errors in the 12, 13, and 14 Chapters of Mr. Hobs his Leviathan,’ London, 1657, 12mo. This was republished in 1663 along with 2. ‘Occasionall Animadversions on some Writings of the Socinians,’ London, 1663, 4to. 3. ‘A Treatise of the Nature of a Minister in all its Offices, to which is annexed an Answer to Doctor Forbes concerning the necessity of Bishops to ordain,’ London, 1670, 4to.

[Authorities quoted supra and Cooper's Memorials of Cambridge, i. 92; Burke's Landed Gentry, ii. 1000; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Angl., ed. Hardy, i. 303; Foster's Alumni Oxonienses, 1500–1714, iii. 947; Browne Willis's Survey of the Cathedral Church of St. David's, 1717, pp. 132, 139, 156, 157, 161; Jones and Freeman's History and Antiquities of St. David's, pp. 332, 333. Short biographies of Lucy are given in Colvile's Worthies of Warwickshire, p. 523, and Granger's Biog. Hist. iii. 317, but both are based upon Wood (Athenæ Oxon. iii. 1127, iv. 853), who also gives his epitaph and a description of his monument in the collegiate church of Brecon. Granger erroneously refers to a portrait of Lucy in the Oxford Almanac, 1749. Several of Lucy's letters are preserved among the Tanner MSS. (Bibl. Bodl.), xliii. 74, xlvii. 51, cxlvi. 113, 126, 133, cccxiv. 40.]

W. A. S. H.

LUDERS, ALEXANDER (d. 1819), legal writer, was second son of Theodore Luders of Lyncombe and Widcombe, Somerset. He was probably of German extraction, and when admitted a member of the Inner Temple on 10 July 1770 was described in the books of the inn as ‘Sacri Romani Imperii nobilis Eques.’ He was called to the bar on 6 Feb. 1778, and became a bencher of his inn on 10 May 1811. He died 25 Nov. 1819. He would seem to be the father of Alexander Luders, who matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1806, aged 17, and died in 1851 (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses). He bequeathed some of his books to the Inner Temple Library, and among them a copy of his ‘Reports of the Proceedings,’ &c., with manuscript notes of his own (cf. Hallam, Const. Hist. iii. 60–1, ed. 1829).

Luders's historico-legal writings are several times cited with approval by Hallam in his ‘Middle Ages’ and ‘Constitutional History,’ and have not yet lost their value. He wrote or edited: 1. ‘Reports of the Proceedings in Committee of the House of Commons upon Controverted Elections heard … during the present Parliament,’ London, 1785–90, 8vo, 3 vols. 2. ‘An Essay on the Use of the French Language in our Ancient Laws and Acts of State,’ Bath, 1807, 8vo. 3. ‘Considerations on the Law of High Treason, in the article of Levying War,’ Bath, 1808, 8vo. 4. ‘Tracts on Various Subjects in the Law and History of England,’ Bath, 1810, 8vo. This volume contains: i. On Constructive Treason; ii. On