LILYE, William (c.1466-1523), one of the introducers of a knowledge of the Greek language into England, was born at Odiham, in or about the year 1466. He entered the university of Oxford in 1484, became a demy of Magdalen in 1486, and after taking his first degree in arts went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his return he put in at Rhodes, which was still occupied by the Knights, under whose protection many Greeks had taken refuge after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. Here he laid the foundation of a knowledge of the Greek language. We next hear of him in Italy, following the lectures of John Sulpitius and Pomponius Laetus at Rome. From this he passed on to Venice, from which place he writes to his friend and patron Thomas Starkey, that “he is assiduously attending the lectures of Egnatius in Latin, but that he finds no one in Venice who can assist him in the study of Greek. He reads, however, Greek by himself, and has read seven plays of Sophocles, five of Euripides, three of Aristophanes, besides extracts from Xenophon and Plutarch, by himself without a teacher.” After his return he settled in London, as a private teacher of grammar, and is believed to have been the first who taught Greek in that city. In 1510 Colet, dean of St Paul’s, who was then founding the school which afterwards became famous, appointed Lilye the first highmaster. He held this office only twelve years, dying of the plague in February 1523....
Lilye’s name deserves commemoration, not only as one of the pioneers of Greek learning, but as one of the joint authors of a book, familiar to many generations of students, down to the present century, the old Eton Latin grammar. The Brevissima Institutio, a sketch by Colet, corrected by Erasmus, and worked upon by Lilye, contains two portions, the authorship of which is indisputably Lilye’s. These are the lines on the genders of nouns, beginning “Propria quae maribus,” and those on the conjugation of verbs, beginning “As in praesenti.” The “Carmen de moribus” bears Lilye’s name in the early editions: but Hearne asserts that it was written by Leland, who was one of his scholars, and that Lilye only adopted it. Besides the Brevissima Institutio, Lilye wrote a variety of Latin pieces both in prose and verse. Some of the latter are printed along with the Latin verses of Sir Thomas More in Progymηasmata Thomee Mori et Gulielmi Lylii Sodalium, Basel, 1518. Another volume of Latin verse directed against a rival schoolmaster and grammarian, Whittington, whose grammar that of Lilye superseded, is entitled Antibossicon ad Gulielmum Horrnαηnum *1521.
The only authority for the few facts which make up the above life of Lilye is a short sketch furnished by his son George to Paulus Jovius, who was collecting for his history the lives of the learned men of Great Britain. All the other names, such as Bale, Pits, Fuller, Wood, which figure in the dictionaries as authorities, are only transcripts of George Lilye. To these scanty memoranda the present article adds an extract from three letters of Lilye’s preserved in the British Museum, Cotton. Nero, B. vi. fol. 157, now printed for the first time.
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