William Lily

William Lily (born 1468?, Odiham, Hampshire, Eng.—died Feb. 25, 1522, London) was an English Renaissance scholar and classical grammarian, a pioneer of Greek learning in England and one of the authors of an extremely popular Latin grammar that, with corrections and revisions, was used as late as the 19th century.

Lily entered the University of Oxford in 1486 and, after graduating in arts, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his return he put in at Rhodes, where he became acquainted with many Greeks, and then went on to Italy, where he attended lectures in Rome and Venice. After his return he settled in London (where he became a close friend of Sir Thomas More), became a private teacher of grammar, and is believed to have been the first to teach Greek in that city. In 1512 John Colet, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral and founder (c. 1509) of St. Paul’s School, appointed Lily as the school’s first high master.

Lily’s Grammar, as the work came to be known, was first published around 1540 and was actually a combined version of two shorter Latin syntaxes that Lily had written some years before. Henry VIII and his successor, Edward VI, ordered the book to be used in all English grammar schools, whereupon it became known as the “King’s Grammar.” Lily’s Grammar came to be severely criticized by schoolmasters, however, because it provided the rules for the Latin language in that same language, rather than in English. Consequently, English translations of the rules and the syntax were added to the grammar by a number of 17th-century grammarians.

Later editions incorporating recognized emendations were published at the University of Cambridge (1634 and 1640) and at Oxford (1636 and 1687). John Ward’s edition (1732) was commonly used in 18th-century English schools. Revised in 1758 and appropriated by Eton College as The Eton Latin Grammar, Lily’s grammar was superseded 10 years later by the Public School Latin Grammar.