Henry Lucas (politician)

The Reverend Henry Lucas (c. 1610 – July 1663) was an English clergyman and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1648.

Life

Lucas was a student at

Member of Parliament for Cambridge University in the Short Parliament. He was re-elected MP for Cambridge University for the Long Parliament in November 1640.^[2] He was excluded from parliament in 1648 under Pride's Purge

.

Lucas died unmarried in Chancery Lane, London, and was buried in Temple Church on 22 July 1663.^[1] He is now mainly remembered as a benefactor.

Family legend has that he died on 7/6/1663, and he was 1 of 5 children of Edward and Mary (Covert) Lucas.

Bequest

Act of Parliament dissolved the ancient Corporation, and provided for the admission of married couples, and for the employment of a Matron.^[3]

By 1999, the original building was no longer suitable for use as a modern almshouse. The original Hospital was sold and in July 2002 the Henry Lucas Charity was merged with the Whiteley Homes Trust. Sixteen double cottages were built in Whiteley Village near Walton-on-Thames in Surrey to provide accommodation for more than twice as many people as was possible in the Hospital, and are known as The Henry Lucas Cottages.

The Drapers used a coat of arms to commemorate Lucas on the Henry Lucas Cottages at Whiteley Village, copying that on Lucas Hospital. This can be described as: Quarterly with a crescent for difference on the fess point: 1 and 4, Argent, a fesse between six annulets gules; 2 and 3, Gules, on a bend argent, seven billets one two one two and one palewise of the bend sable, a quartering of the Lucas and Morieux families' coats of arms.

Lucas also bequeathed his collection of 4,000 books (including Galileo's Dialogo of 1632) to the University Library at Cambridge, along with enough land to give an income of £100 a year, which was to be used to fund a professorship of "mathematick", now the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics.

References

^ ^a ^b "Lucas, Henry (LCS635H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
^ Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. pp. 229–239.
^ Lucas's Hospital Charity Scheme Confirmation Act 1923, legislation.gov.uk

External links

Parliament of England
Vacant Parliament suspended since 1629	Member of Parliament for Cambridge University 1640–1648 With: Thomas Eden 1640–1644 Nathaniel Bacon 1645–1648	Succeeded by Nathaniel Bacon

[Venn-1] "Lucas, Henry (LCS635H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.

[Willis-2] Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. pp. 229–239.

[3] Lucas's Hospital Charity Scheme Confirmation Act 1923, legislation.gov.uk

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