Harrington, James

, a young lawyer of great promise, was born probably at Waltham Abbey, where his father resided, in 1664. He was educated at Westminster school, whence he was elected student of Christ church, Oxford, in 1683, and soon after was entered a member of the Inner Temple. In 1690 he proceeded M. A. and was admitted to the bar, where he acquired very extensive practice. Some months before his death, he removed to Lincoln’s-inn, where that event happened Nov. 23, 1693, in his twenty-ninth year. His body was conveyed to Oxford, and, according to Wood, buried under the north wall of the north transept joining to the body of the cathedral of Christ church, but we find no memorial of him in Wood’s account of the monumental inscriptions. His death, it is said, was much deplored by those that knew him, “be^ cause, 1. That he was a prodigy, considering his age, in his knowledge of the common law. 2. That he was a person of excellent parts; and 3. That he was very honest in his dealing, and of a good and generous nature.” His writings, enumerated by Wood, are principally cases and memorials respecting certain local disputes, the rights of visitations, &c. at Oxford. He contributed some Latin poems to the “Musae Anglicans,” and wrote the preface to the first volume of Wood’s “Athenae,” and the introduction to the second. He also edited the works of Dr. George Stradling, to which he added a preface and life. 1

1

Ath. Ox. vol. II. Nichols’s Atterbury, vol. I,