WILLIAM

See also:

• LITHGOW
• WILLIAM LITHGOW (1582–? 165o)

LITHGOW (1582–? 165o)  , Scottish traveller and writer, was born and educated in Lanark . He was caught in a love-adventure, mutilated of his ears by the brothers of the lady (hence the sobriquet " Cut-lugged Willie "), and forced to leave Scotland . For nineteen years he travelled, mostly on foot, through Europe, the Levant, Egypt and northern Africa, covering, according to his estimate, over 36,000 m . The story of his adventures may be drawn from The Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures and painful ! Peregrinations of long nineteene Meares (London, 1614; fuller edition, 1632, &c.); A True and Experimentall Discourse upon the last siege of Breda (London, 1637) ; and a similar book giving an account of the siege of Newcastle and the battle of Marston Moor (Edinburgh, 1645) . He is the author of a Present Surveigh of London (London, 1643) . He left six poems, written between 1618 and 1640 (reprinted by Maidment, Edinburgh, 1863) . Of these " Scotland's Welcome to King Charles, 1633 " has considerable antiquarian interest . His writing has no literary merit; but its excessively aureate style deserves notice . The best account of Lithgow and his works is by F . Hindes Groome in the Diet . Nat .

Biog . The piece entitled Scotland's Paraenesis to King Charles II . (166o), ascribed to him in the

catalogue of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, cannot, from internal evidence, be his .