De Lacy O'Leary
De Lacy Evans O'Leary (1872–1957) was a British Orientalist who lectured at the University of Bristol and wrote a number of books on the early history of Arabs and Copts. Personal life De Lacy Evans O'Leary was born in Devon in 1872, the eldest child of Henry O'Leary (1831–1908), a Mauritius-born Anglo-Irish former captain in the New Zealand militia, and Julia Hornsey (1841–1884). On his father's side, O'Leary was descended from Irish Catholics of Limerick, and included one of the generals in Wellington's Peninsular Campaign. Brought up as a Protestant and educated at Bristol Grammar School, O'Leary converted to Roman Catholicism in about 1888 and began to train for the priesthood at Prior Park College near Bath, before returning to the Church of England in 1890. He never married, and was an active freemason. Career O'Leary studied at the University of London (1891–95) before becoming a minister in the Church of England, and later undertook further studies towards a Master of Arts at Trinity College Dublin (1905). He was awarded second prize in Trinity College’s Elrington Theological Prize (1903) for an essay on the Epistle of St James, and the following year the Elrington Theological Prize itself for the essay