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, bishop of Avranches in Normandy, usually surnamed St. Victor, flourished in the twelfth century. His birth-place is much contested; but it appears most probable that he was a Norman, of a noble family; and as Normandy was at that time subject to the King of England, it was supposed he was an Englishman. He was, however, a Canon-regular of the order of St. Augustine, and second abbot of St. Victor at Paris. He was preferred to the bishoprick of Avranches in 1162 by the interest of King Henry II. of England, with whom he appears to have been a favourite, as he stood god-father to Eleanor, daughter to that prince, and afterwards wife of Alphonso Jx. king of Castile. He died March 29, 1172, and was interred in the church of the Holy Trinity, belonging to the abbey of Luzerne, in the diocese of Avranches. His epitaph, which, the authors of the General Dictionary say, is still remaining, speaks his character: “Here lies bishop Achard, by whose charity our poverty was enriched.” He was a person of great eminence for piety and learning. His younger years he spent in the study of polite literature and philosophy, and the latter part of his life in intense application. His works were: “De Tentatione Christi,” a ms. in the library of St. Victor at Paris. “De divisione Animae & Spiritus,” in the same library; copies of which are in the public library at Cambridge, and in that of Bene't. His “Sermons” are in the library of Clairvaux. He likewise wrote “The Life of St. Geselin,” which was published at Douay, 12mo, 1626.

, a canon regular of the order of St. Augustine, distinguished himself in Bavaria by the mimher and value of his writings, although many of them are on subjects that will not now be thought interesting. He was esteemed a wise and modest man, but rather singular in some points. He published, among other works, “Philosophia Pollingana,” Augsburg, 1730, fol. at the end of which is an extraordinary attempt to deny the earth’s motion; “A theological history of Indulgences,” fol.; a supplement to “Pontas’s Dictionary of cases of Con-­science;” “Rules from holy scripture, councils, and the fathers, respecting revelations, apparitions, and visions,” 2 vols. 1744, 4to; “A dissertation on the author of The Imitation of Jesus Christ, usually attributed to Thomas a Kempis.” All these works, of which, except the first, we have not been able to recover the exact titles, were written in Latin. Amort died Nov. 25, 1775, at the age of eightytwo.

, the martyred bishop of St. David’s in the sixteenth century, was an ancestor of the preceding, and born in Halifax parish, Yorkshire, probably at Ewood. He became, when a young man, a canon regular of the order of St. Austin, but in what priory or abbey is uncertain. Having partly received his academical education in Cambridge, he retired to a nursery for the canons of St. Austin, i.t Oxford, called St. Mary’s-college (where Erasmus had before studied), and here we find him in 1526, and also in Oct. 1533, when as a member of the said college, he was admitted to the reading of the sentences, having a little before been opponent in divinity. About the same time he became chaplain to archbishop Cranmer, after whose example he married, a practice at that time disallowed among the popish clergy, and in the time of queen Mary, made the ground of a criminal charge. Dodd, who treats him with more respect than some protestant biographers, adopts from Wood the account, that he was among the first of the university of Oxford that received a tincture of Lutheranism, in which he was confirmed by Thomas Garret, curate of Honey-lane in London, who provided him with books for that purpose, and that in the year above-mentioned he was chosen prior of a monastery of his order, called Nostel, or St. Oswald’s, in Yorkshire, which he surrendered to the commissioners upon the dissolution in 1540, being gratified with a pension of 100l. per annum.

, or Halifax, or Sacrobosco, was, according to Leland, Bale, and Pits, born at Halifax in Yorkshire, which Mr. Watson thinks very improbable; according to Stainhurst, at Holywood near Dublin; and according to Dempster and Mackenzie, in Nithsdale in Scotland. There may perhaps have been more than one of the name to occasion this difference of opinion. Mackenzie informs us, that having finished his studies, he entered into orders, and became a canon regular of the order of St. Augustin in the famous monastery of Holywood in Nithsdale. The English biographers, on the contrary, tell us that he was educated at Oxford. They all agree however in asserting, that he spent most of his life at Paris; where, says Mackenzie, he was admitted a member of the university, June 5, 1221, under the syndics of the Scotch nation; and soon after was elected professor of mathematics, which he taught with applause for many years. According to the same author, he died in 1256, as appears from the inscription on his monument in the cloisters of the convent of St. Maturine at Paris.

, an English chronicler, so called from Langtoft in Yorkshire, flourished in the thirteenth, and beginning of the fourteenth century, and was a canon regular of the order of St. Austin at Bridiington in Yorkshire. He translated out of the Latin into French verse, Bosenham or Boscam’s Life of Thomas a Becket, and compiled likewise in French verse, a Chronicle of England, copies of which are in several libraries. He begun his chronicle as early as the old fable of the Trojans, and brings it down to the end of the reign of Edward I. He is supposed to have died about the beginning of Edward II. or soon after. Robert de Brunne, as we have already mentioned in his article (see Brunne), gave an English metrical version of Langtoft, which was edited by Hearne in 1725, 2 vols. 8vo.