LUCAS, SIR CHARLES (d. 1648), English soldier, was the son of Sir Thomas Lucas of Colchester, Essex. As a young man he saw service in the Netherlands under the command of his brother, and in the “Bishops’ War” he commanded a troop of horse in King Charles I.’s army. In 1639 he was made a knight. At the outbreak of the Civil War Lucas naturally took the king’s side, and at the first cavalry fight, Powick Bridge, he was wounded. Early in 1643 he raised a regiment of horse, with which he defeated Middleton at Padbury on July 1st. In January 1644 he commanded the forces attacking Nottingham, and soon afterwards, on Prince Rupert’s recommendation, he was made lieutenant-general of Newcastle’s Northern army. When Newcastle was shut up in York, Lucas and the cavalry remained in the open country, and when Rupert’s relieving army crossed the mountains into Yorkshire he was quickly joined by Newcastle’s squadrons. At Marston Moor Lucas swept Fairfax’s Yorkshire horse before him, but later in the day he was taken prisoner. Exchanged during the winter, he defended Berkeley Castle for a short time against Rainsborough, but was soon in the field again. As lieutenant-general of all the horse he accompanied Lord Astley in the last campaign of the first war, and, taken prisoner at Stow-on-the-Wold, he engaged not to bear arms against parliament in the future. This parole he must be held to have broken when he took a prominent part in the seizure of Colchester in 1648. That place was soon invested, and finally fell, after a desperate resistance, to Fairfax’s army. The superior officers had to surrender “at mercy,” and Lucas and Sir George Lisle were immediately tried by court martial and sentenced to death. The two Royalists were shot the same evening in the Castle of Colchester.
See Lloyd, Memoirs of Excellent Personages (1669); and Earl de Grey, A Memoir of the Life of Sir Charles Lucas (1845).
LUCAS, CHARLES (1713-1771), Irish physician and politician, was the son of a country gentleman of small means in Co. Clare. Charles opened a small business as an apothecary in Dublin, and between 1735 and 1741 he began his career as a pamphleteer by publishing papers on professional matters which led to legislation requiring inspection of drugs. Having been elected a member of the common council of Dublin in 1741 he detected and exposed encroachments by the aldermen on the electoral rights of the citizens, and entered upon a controversy on the subject, but failed in legal proceedings against the aldermen in 1744. With a view to becoming a parliamentary candidate for the city of Dublin he issued in 1748-1749 a series of political addresses in which he advocated the principles of Molyneux and Swift; and he made himself so obnoxious to the government that the House of Commons voted him an enemy to the country, and issued a proclamation for his arrest, thus compelling him to retire for some years to the continent. Having studied medicine at Paris, Lucas took the degree of M.D. at Leiden in 1752. In the following year he started practice as a physician in London, and in 1756 he published a work on medicinal waters, the properties of which he had studied on the continent and at Bath. The essay was reviewed by Dr Johnson, and although it was resented by the medical profession it gained a reputation and a considerable practice for its author. In 1760 he renewed his political pamphleteering; and having obtained a pardon from George III., he proceeded to Dublin, where he received a popular welcome and a Doctor’s degree from Trinity College. He was elected member for the city of Dublin in 1761, his colleague in the representation being the recorder, Henry Grattan’s father. On the appointment of Lord Halifax as lord lieutenant in the same year Lucas wrote him a long letter (19th of Sept. 1761, MSS. Irish State Paper Office) setting forth the grievances which Ireland had suffered in the past, chiefly on account of the exorbitant pensions enjoyed by government officials. The cause of these evils he declared to be the unrepresentative character of the Irish constitution; and among the remedies he proposed was the shortening of parliaments. Lucas brought in a bill in his first session to effect this reform, but was defeated on the motion to have the bill sent to England for approval by the privy council; and he insisted upon the independent rights of the Irish parliament, which were afterwards in fuller measure successfully vindicated by Grattan. He also defended the privileges of the Irish Protestants in the press, and especially in the Freeman’s Journal, founded in 1763. His contributions to the press, and his Addresses to the Lord Mayor and other political pamphlets made him one of the most popular writers in Ireland of his time, although he was anti-catholic in his prejudices, and although, as Lecky observes, “there is nothing in his remains to show that he possessed any real superiority either of intellect or knowledge, or even any remarkable brilliancy of expression.” He died on the 4th of November 1771, and was accorded a public funeral. As an orator Charles Lucas appears to have had little power, and he made no mark in the House of Commons.
See R. R. Madden, Hist. of Irish Periodical Literature from the End of the 17th to the Middle of the 19th Century (2 vols., London, 1867); Francis Hardy, Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont (2 vols., London, 1812); W. E. H. Lecky, History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, vols. i. and ii. (5 vols., London, 1892).
LUCAS, JOHN SEYMOUR (1849- ), English painter, was born in London, and was a student in the Royal Academy Schools. He was elected an associate of the academy in 1886 and academician in 1898, and became a constant exhibitor of pictures of historical and domestic incidents, notably of the Tudor and Stuart periods, painted with much skill and with close attention to detail. One of his most important works is a panel in the Royal Exchange, presented by the corporation of London, representing William the Conqueror granting the first charter to the city; and one of his earlier pictures, “After Culloden: Rebel Hunting,” is in the National Gallery of British Art.
LUCAS VAN LEYDEN (c. 1494-1533), Dutch painter, was born at Leiden, where his father Huig Jacobsz gave him the first lessons in art. He then entered the painting-room of Cornelis Engelbrechtszen of Leiden, and soon became known for his capacity in making designs for glass, engraving copper-plates, painting pictures, portraits and landscapes in oil and distemper. According to van Mander he was born in 1494, and painted at the age of twelve a “Legend of St Hubert” for which he was paid a dozen florins. He was only fourteen when he finished a plate representing Mahomet taking the life of Sergius, the monk, and at fifteen he produced a series of nine plates for a “Passion,” a “Temptation of St Anthony,” and a “Conversion of St Paul.” The list of his engravings in 1510, when, according to van Mander, he was only sixteen, includes subjects as various as a celebrated “Ecce Homo,” “Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise,” a herdsman and a milkmaid with three cows, and a little naked girl running away from a barking dog. Whatever may be thought of the tradition embodied in van Mander’s pages as to the true age of Lucas van Leyden, there is no doubt that, as early as 1508, he was a master of repute as a copperplate engraver. It was the time when art found patrons among the public that could ill afford to buy pictures, yet had enough interest in culture to satisfy itself by means of prints. Lucas van Leyden became the representative man for the public of Holland as Dürer for that of Germany; and a rivalry grew up between the two engravers, which came to be so close that on the neutral market of Italy the products of each were all but evenly quoted. Vasari affirmed that Dürer surpassed Lucas as a designer, but that in the use of the graver they were both unsurpassed, a judgment which has not been reversed. But the rivalry was friendly. About the time when Dürer visited the Netherlands Lucas went to Antwerp, which then flourished as an international mart for productions of the pencil and the graver, and it is thought that he was the master who took the freedom of the Antwerp gild in 1521 under the name of Lucas the Hollander. In Dürer’s diary kept during his travels in the Low Countries, we find that at Antwerp he met Lucas, who asked him to dinner, and that Dürer accepted. He valued the art of Lucas at its true figure, and exchanged the Dutchman’s prints for eight florins’ worth of his own. In 1527 Lucas made a tour of the Netherlands, giving dinners to the painters of the gilds of Middleburg, Ghent, Malines and Antwerp. He was accompanied during the trip by Mabuse, whom he imitated in his style as well as in his love of rich costume. On his return home he fell sick and remained ailing till his death in 1533, and he believed that poison had been administered to him by some envious comrade.