his return from Italy, the king caused a new table of laws to be prepared on the basis of the Institutes of Dyvnwal Moelmud; and that this celebrated code, after being approved by Howel himself, and submitted to the popular suffrages at the White House on the Tav, was carried to Rome in 930 by the king, and confirmed by the reigning pontiff, and on Howel's return, again, and finally ratified by the national convention, preparatory to its publication throughout Wales. Howel died in 948. Several MS. copies of his Institutes are preserved. From the most ancient we gather that the old Welsh code, as it stood in his time, was divided into three sections, viz.—Laws relating to the royal prerogative; laws connected with civil jurisprudence; the criminal laws.—(Parry's Cambrian Plutarch, 1834, p. 98, et seq.)—W. C. H.
HOWELL, James, one of the earliest of our "authors by profession," a prolific and versatile writer, was the son of a Welsh clergyman, and born in the neighbourhood of Brecknock about 1596. Educated at Hereford free-school and Jesus college, Oxford, where he took his B.A. degree in 1613, he repaired to London—a junior of a large family, and with an active temperament—to seek his fortune. Sir Robert Mansel, the vice-admiral. Lord Pembroke, and other influential persons, had established a glass manufactory in Broad Street, a kind of speculation, which in those days was considered the very reverse of plebeian. Howell became their "steward," or manager, and was despatched by them, in 1619, on a continental business-tour, to procure the best workmen and the best material for the operations of the "glass-house," as it was then called. Howell remained abroad till 1621, visiting France, Spain, Italy, and Holland; forwarding barilla from Alicante, and workmen from Venice; inspecting men and manners with a quick eye; and acquiring a considerable knowledge of the principal languages of Europe. His roving disposition was not satisfied with this trip; and soon after his return he left the glass-house, accompanied as tutor a young gentleman on his foreign travels, and went to Madrid when Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I., was there wooing the infanta—to negotiate the return of an English merchantman which had been seized by the viceroy of Sardinia. The failure of the Spanish match brought Howell's negotiations to an untimely close, and he returned to England. He was now a man of some reputation, and was appointed secretary to Lord Scrope, the president of the North. While holding this office he was elected, without effort of his own, by the corporation of Richmond in Yorkshire, a member of the parliament of 1627. His life for some years was changeful and wandering. In 1632 he accompanied as secretary Lord Leicester, sent on a special mission to the court of Denmark. A mission to France in 1635 was intrusted to him by Secretary Windebank. In 1639 he was in Ireland, patronized and employed by Strafford the lord-lieutenant, who sent him on business to Edinburgh; and next year, after an official trip to France, he was appointed clerk of the council, a post of fair emolument and of seeming permanence. But the great Rebellion broke out, and Howell did not long enjoy his new office. In 1643 his person and papers were seized, according to his own account, by a committee of parliament, and his wanderings were closed by an imprisonment in the Fleet, the continuance of which however, Anthony Wood hints, was due less to political causes than to the debts which in his extravagance he had contracted. He remained in the Fleet, working hard and profitably for the booksellers, until after the Restoration, when the new post of historiographer royal was created for him. He died in the November of 1666. His writings were most numerous and varied—including dictionaries, grammars, histories, biographies, poems, and political pamphlets—among the last one entitled "Some sober inspections made into the carriage and consults of the late Long Parliament," which congratulated and complimented Cromwell on the dismissal of the Rump, and seems to have been Howell's solitary departure from fidelity to the royal cause. His "Londinopolis," published in 1657, though chiefly a compilation from Stowe, is still consulted for the occasionally original traits of contemporary London which it contains. But the work which has preserved Howell's name and fame is his letters, the first series of which was published in 1645, with the title "Epistolæ Ho-elianæ, or familiar letters, domestic and foreign, divided into sundry sections, partly historical, partly political, partly philosophical." Another series was published in 1647, and both, with the addition of a third, in 1650. They continued to be reprinted, and to be considered an English classic so late as the middle of last century. Many of them, doubtless, were manufactured in the Fleet for publication; but some of them, especially those belonging to the period before 1641, are evidently genuine letters, of which Howell had preserved either drafts or copies. Besides the charm arising from their portraiture of the lively and cheerful character of their clever, gossiping, egotistical writer, they have a considerable value, anecdotical, biographical, and historical. They are full of interesting notices of society on the continent and in England. Chaotic in their arrangement, often deficient in dates, and obscure from the substitution of initials for names, they require only proper editing to regain something of their old popularity. It is to be regretted that Dr. Bliss, the editor of the Athenæ Oxonienses, who had made preparations for discharging the task, did not fulfil his intention of giving to the world a careful modern edition of Howell's Letters.—F. E.
HOWELL, Lawrence, was born about 1660, and educated at Jesus college, Cambridge. He received ordination at the hands of the nonjuring Bishop Hickes, and refused to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to William, Anne, and George I. In 1716 he published "The case of Schism in the Church of England truly stated," in which he laboured to prove that the whole English church deserved excommunication, and other offensive propositions. Howell was at once apprehended in Bullhead Court, Jewin Street, and his papers and pamphlet were seized; upon him was found, among other important documents, the certificate of his ordination, in which Dr. Hickes calls himself suffragan bishop of Thetford.—(See Hickes, George.) He was thrown into Newgate, and tried at the Old Bailey for high treason; was degraded and unfrocked; and sentenced to pay a fine of £500, to lie in prison three years, and to be twice whipped. The latter part of the punishment was remitted, but the victim of intolerance remained in prison till his death in 1720. He published "A Synopsis of the Canons of the Greek Church," and another of the Latin; a "History of the Bible;" and a "View of the Pontificate to the Council of Trent."—B. H. C.
* HOWITT, William and Mary, poets and writers in general literature, husband and wife, have been so long associated in literary labour that it would be difficult to dissever them in a notice of their lives and works. William Howitt was born in 1795 at the village of Heanor in Derbyshire, where his family had been settled for many generations. He was educated at the public school of the Society of Friends at Ackworth in Yorkshire; and continued with his wife in the membership of that society until within the last fifteen years. Mary Howitt, whose maiden name was Botham, was born in 1800—also of Quaker parents, whose ancestors had been of the stock of the martyrs, at Coleford in Gloucestershire—but spent her early years in the little town of Uttoxeter in Staffordshire. The first public appearance in print of William and Mary Howitt was in a joint volume published in 1823, "The Forest Minstrel." They soon became widely known as poetical and prose contributors to the Annuals. In 1827 followed a second joint volume, "The Desolation of Eyam, and other poems." Between 1831 and 1837, during a residence at Nottingham, William Howitt published "The Book of the Seasons;" "Pantika, or traditions of the most ancient times;" and "A Popular History of Priestcraft." During their residence at Nottingham, Mary Howitt produced her longest, and perhaps most remarkable poetical work, "The Seven Temptations." At Nottingham also she produced a novel entitled "Wood Leighton;" and commenced, originally for the use of her own children, that series of books for the young, which have especially endeared her name to thousands of hearts in this country and in America. In 1837 William Howitt retired from business, in which he had been engaged in Nottingham, and removed to the pleasant village of Esher in Surrey, where he gave himself up exclusively to literary occupations. Here William and Mary Howitt produced in rapid succession some of their most popular works—the former, his "Colonization and Christianity;" "The Rural Life of England;" the first series of "Visits to Remarkable Places, Old Halls, and Battle Fields;" "Jack of the Mill, a romance for young people;" and "The Boys' Country Book." About the same time Mary Howitt published two volumes of poems for children, entitled "Birds and Flowers, and other country things," and "Hymns and Fireside Verses." She also commenced a series of stories in thirteen volumes, under the general title of "Tales for the People and their Children." After a residence of about three years at
