Short answers, pulled from the story.
John Lingard was born on the 5th of February 1771 in St Thomas Street in central Winchester. His parents migrated from Claxby in Lincolnshire to London and finally to Winchester, where his family had suffered for their faith.
John Lingard published the first three volumes of The History of England in 1819, which grew into an eight-volume work covering the period from the first Roman invasion to the accession of Henry VIII. The final edition is a ten-volume set covering history up to the Accession of William and Mary in 1688.
John Lingard was the first British historian to make extensive use of Vatican archives and French, Italian, Spanish, and English dispatches, document collections, and state papers. His peripheral nature as an English Catholic allowed him to develop a keen critical judgement and a devotion to absolute accuracy and detail.
In 1821, Pope Pius VII honored John Lingard with a triple doctorate in theology, canon law, and civil law. A few years later, Pope Leo XII conferred upon him a gold medal generally only given to cardinals and princes.
John Lingard died at Hornby on the 17th of July 1851 at the age of eighty-one. He was buried in the cloister of the college cemetery at Ushaw, where he had once taught and where he had donated a stained glass window.