Some Incidental Writings by De Morgan

Extract

Ser. v. 89. John of Halifax.—Since every country has its Holywood, and de Sacnbosco does not distinguish Holywood from Halifax, John of Halifax has been claimed both by Ireland and Scotland, and, if I remember right, by some foreign countries. The manuscripts of his works, as well as the earlier printed editions, call him Anglus or Anglicus; and he lived in a time at which the natives of the three countries were as distinct as Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians. Bale, quoting Leland, calls him Halifax; as does Tanner: Pits gives his birth to Halifax. He was buried in the Maturin convent at Paris, where his epitaph existed in the sixteenth century. Pits implies that it appears from the epitaph that he died in 1256: Maestlinus expressly affirms that it can be collected from the epitaph, in the Ad Lectorem of his Epitome Astronorniae. All the authorities believe him to be English; and Leland thought he traced him as a student at Oxford. But had the manuscripts called him anything but English, the other evidence would not have weighed them down; for there are plenty of Holywoods, and there was, notoriously, a press of foreign students to Oxford in the thirteenth century. But name and residence in England may come in aid of the manuscripts.