(William,) the grammarian, was born in the year 1466 at Oldham in Hampshire; and in 1486, was admitted a semi-commoner of Magdalen college, in Oxford. Having taken the degree of bachelor of arts, he left the university, and travelled to Jerusalem. Returning from thence, he continued five years in the island of Rhodes, where he studied the Greek language, several learned men having retired thither after the taking of Constantinople. From Rhodes he travelled to Rome; where he improved himself in the Greek and Latin languages, under Sulpitius and P. Sabinus. He then returned to London, where for some time he taught a private grammar-school, being the first person who taught Greek in the metropolis. In 1510, when Dr Colet founded St Paul's school, Lilye was appointed the first master; at which time, it seems, he was married and had many children. In this employment he had laboured 12 years, when, being seized by the plague, which then raged in London, he died in February 1523, and was buried in the north yard of St Paul's. He had the character of an excellent grammarian, and a successful teacher of the learned languages. His principal work is Brevissima institutio seu ratio grammaticae cognoscendi; Lond. 1513. Reprinted times without number, and commonly called Lilye's grammar. The English rudiments were written by Dr Colet, dean of St Paul's; and the preface to the first edition, by cardinal Wolsey. The English syntax was written by Lilye; also the rules for the genders of nouns, beginning with Propria que maribus; and those for the preterperfect tenses and supines, beginning with As in presenti. The Latin syntax was chiefly the work of Erasmus. See Ward's preface to his edition of Lilye's Grammar, 1732.