SEELEY, SIR JOHN ROBERT (1834-1895).—­Historian and essayist, s. of a publisher in London, ed. at City of London School and Camb.  In 1863 he became Prof. of Latin at Univ.  Coll., London, and was Prof. of Modern History at Camb. from 1869 until his death.  In 1865 appeared anonymously Ecce Homo, a work which created intense excitement and keen controversy in the theological and religious world.  Other works were The Life and Times of Stein, the Prussian statesman (1879), Natural Religion (1882), The Expansion of England (1883), Life of Napoleon (1885), and a work on Goethe. The Growth of British Policy (1895) was left finished but unrevised at his death.  In recognition of his services to the empire in his political writings he was, in 1894, made K.C.M.G.

SELDEN, JOHN (1584-1654).—­Jurist and scholar, b. near Worthing, Sussex, the s. of a farmer who was also a musician, ed. at Chichester and Oxf., and studied law at Clifford’s Inn and the Inner Temple.  His learning soon attracted attention and, though practising little, he was consulted on points involving legal erudition.  His first work, Analecton Anglo-Britannicon, a chronological collection of English records down to the Norman invasion, was written in 1606, though not pub. till 1615.  In 1610 appeared a treatise on the Duello, or Single Combat; and in 1614 his largest English work on Titles of Honour, full of profound learning, and still a high authority.  Three years later, 1617, he wrote in Latin his treatise, De Deis Syris (on the Gods of Syria), an inquiry into polytheism, specially with reference to the false deities mentioned in Scripture.  His reputation as a scholar had now become European.  In 1618 he incurred the indignation of the King and the clergy by his History of Tithes, in which he denied their claim to be a divine institution.  Called before the High Commission he made a statement regretting the publication of the book though not withdrawing any of its statements.  In 1621 he suffered a brief imprisonment for withstanding some of James’s doctrines as to the privileges of Parliament.  Two years later he was elected member for Lancaster.  As a politician his views were moderate, and all along he endeavoured to repress the zeal of the extremists on both sides.  He was imprisoned in the Tower for four years, 1630-34.  During the final struggle of King and Parliament he was much employed; but like most men of moderate views, was frequently under suspicion, and after the execution of the King, to which he was strongly opposed, he took little to do with public matters.  He was a lay member of the Westminster Assembly, 1643, where his profound knowledge of the original tongues made him somewhat of a terror to certain extremists among the divines.  He had at an early age been appointed steward to the Earl of Kent, and at the house of his widow, with whom he had long lived in such close friendship