Richard Lee (engineer): Difference between revisions
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==List of works== |
==List of works== |
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* [[Berwick upon Tweed]] |
* [[Berwick upon Tweed]] |
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* [[Calais]] |
* [[Pale of Calais|Calais]] |
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* [[Dover Harbour]] |
* [[Dover Harbour]] |
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* [[Harwich]] and Langar Point |
* [[Harwich]] and Langar Point |
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Revision as of 20:13, 26 December 2010
Sir Richard Lee (1513–1575) was a military engineer.
He was a commander of Henry VIII by whom he was knighted in 1544 and appointed surveyor of the King's works.
Following the dissolution of St Albans Abbey he purchased the grounds of the abbey (the abbey church itself was sold by King Edward VI to the people of St Albans in 1553), Sopwell Priory and the rectorship of St Stephen's church (both of which were nearby). He tore down the priory and built a Tudor house on the site which he named Lee Hall. He also purchased the manor of Abbots Langley.
Between 1536 and 1542 Lee was surveyor of works at Calais. During the war of the Rough Wooing, in January 1544 Richard was sent into Scotland with the Italian engineers Antonio da Bergamo and John Thomas Scala, as expert men in the skill of fortifying.[1] Lee is generally believed to have plundered the Dunkeld Lectern from Holyrood Abbey during an attack on Edinburgh in 1544. He certainly took the brass font from Holyrood once used to christen Scottish monarchs. Now destroyed, it was formerly at St Albans with his name and the story of its capture in 1544 engraved on it.[2] Around 1550-1552 Lee was at Berwick-upon-Tweed constructing the novel trace-italienne fortifications.[3] In 1557 he was trench-master to the Earl of Pembroke in the Netherlands, and in 1558 went to Berwick as Surveyor of Works.
After working at Portsmouth, in 1560 Richard was again supervising the re-fortification of Berwick, by correspondence with Rowland Johnston and in person in April. He was to "set forward the device for Berwick": to design the new works. Lee also went to the Siege of Leith on 27 April 1560 asked to, "prick them forward to an end." This was probably to help plan the assault on May 7 which failed. Lee made a map of Leith which was sent to London on 15 May 1560. Lee and Pelham, a captain at Leith, were called before Elizabeth I of England in June 1564, perhaps to give their testimony on affairs at Leith.[4] When in London at this period, Lee stayed at the house of Mr. Graisse in Cheapside.[5] In 1565 Lee viewed the site of Lindisfarne Castle on Beblowe Crag.[6]
List of works
- Berwick upon Tweed
- Calais
- Dover Harbour
- Harwich and Langar Point
- Lindisfarne Castle
- Siege of Leith
- Norham Castle
- Portsmouth
- Queenborough
- Sandown, Isle of Wight
- Tynemouth
- Upnor Castle
Footnotes
- ^ Lodge, Edmund, Illustrations of British History, vol. 1 (1791), 80-81.
- ^ Galloway, William, PSAS, (1879), 296; see external link.
- ^ Merriman, Marcus, The Rough Wooing, Tuckwell (2000), 374-5.
- ^ HMC Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield House, vol. 1 (1883), 222, 297.
- ^ Calendar State Papers Foreign Elizabeth 1559-1560, Longman (1865), no. 1078, & see index.
- ^ Colvin, Howard, ed., The History of the King's Works, vol. 4 part 2, HMSO (1982), 678.
External Links
- Sir Richard Lee's funerary helmet, St Albans Museum
- Galloway, William, 'An Ancient Scottish Lectern', (Dunkeld Lectern), PSAS, (1879), 287-301
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