man of considerable ability
and learning, his vanity and eccentricity verged upon insanity, and he is
said to have _d._ from the effects of an uncontrollable fit of joyful
laughter on hearing news of the Restoration. Among his extravagances was
a genealogy of his family traced through his _f._ to Adam, and through
his mother to Eve, he himself being the 153rd in descent. He _pub._
_Trissotetras_, a work on trigonometry (1645), an invective against the
Presbyterians (1652), a scheme for a universal language,
_Logopandecteision_ (1653), and a partial translation of Rabelais (1653),
a further portion being _pub._ in 1693. In the last he was assisted by
Peter Anthony Motteux, a Frenchman who had established himself in
England, who continued the work.

USK, THOMAS (_d._ 1388).--Poet, _b._ in London, was sec. to John of
Northampton, the Wyclifite Lord Mayor of London, whom he betrayed to save
himself, in which, however, he failed, being executed in 1388. During his
imprisonment, which lasted from 1384 until his death, he composed _The
Testament of Love_, a didactic poem long attributed to Chaucer.

USSHER, JAMES (1581-1656).--Divine and scholar, _b._ in Dublin, the _s._
of a lawyer there, and _ed._ at Trinity Coll., took orders, and became
Chancellor of St. Patrick's, Dublin, 1605, and Prof. of Divinity,
1607-21. On the Irish clergy, in 1715, deciding to assert themselves as
an independent church, U. had the main hand in drawing up the
constitution, certain features of which led to the suspicion of his being
in favour of Puritanism. To defend himself he went in 1619 to England,
and had a conference with the King (James I.), in which he so completely
succeeded that he was in 1621 made Bishop of Meath, and four years later
Archbishop of Armagh. He constantly used his influence in favour of
reform, and endeavoured to introduce such modifications of Episcopacy as
would conciliate and comprehend the Presbyterians. During the troubles
which led to the Civil War U. maintained the unlawfulness of taking up
arms against the King. The Rebellion in Ireland in 1641 drove him away,
and he settled first at Oxf., but ultimately at the house of Lady
Peterborough at Reigate, where he _d._ in 1656. His works dealt chiefly
with ecclesiastical antiquities and chronology, his _magnum opus_ being
_Annales_, a chronology of the world from the creation to the dispersion
of the Jews in the reign of Vespasian, a work which gained him great
reputa