He was the eldest son of John Fiott and Harriet, daughter of William Lee, of Totteridge, MP for Appleby, of the family of the Lee baronets of Hartwell. His father was involved in the family counting house business and was a failed East Indiamerchant. He was orphaned when young and was brought up by his maternal uncle, William Lee Antonie.
Lee read Mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge between 1802 and 1806, graduating fifth wrangler in his year.[1] He was elected a fellow in 1808. Following his studies from 1807 to 1815 he travelled extensively in the Middle East and Europe as a travelling bachelor. During this time he gained an interest in antiquities.
He took the name Lee in 1816 following the death of his uncle William Lee Antonie in 1815.[1] In 1833 Lee married Cecilia Rutter (23 July 1782 – 1 April 1854), of Lymington, whom he described as of "humble station but excellent character and good disposition".[2][3] She died in 1854 and was buried in the graveyard of Hartwell Church, in Buckinghamshire. In 1855, he married again, this time to Louisa Catherine, daughter of Lee's friend Robert Wilkinson, who ran a private school at Totteridge Park, the old Lee family seat[4] (other sources indicate her to be daughter of Richard Ford Heath, of Uxbridge).[5]
Lee inherited several properties from William Lee Antonie in 1815. Antonie's will predicated the inheritance on Lee changing his name by royal licence from Fiott. The properties included Colworth House near SharnbrookinBedfordshire and Totteridge Park, Buckinghamshire (formerly in Hertfordshire). In 1827, Lee inherited Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire and all the Lee family estates on the death of Sir George Lee, 6th and last Baronet; this became his main residence from 1829 until his death.[1]
Lee would "invite thirty or forty scientists to stay with him for anything up to a month, discussing their latest theories" "year after year"; these regular guests included William Henry Smyth and his daughter Henrietta, mother of Scouting founder Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell. His scholarly nature meant Lee cared nothing for "the aristocratic world which his house so vividly evoked" for visitors. He dressed plainly, and was opposed to any indulgence in tobacco and alcohol.[7][1]
Lee had no children; he was succeeded in his estates by his nephew Edward Dyke Lee, only surviving son of his brother Nicholas Fiott, later Lee.[8]
Between 1830 and 1839, Lee built an astronomical observatory in the south-west corner of Hartwell House.
Lee helped found the Royal Meteorological Society in 1850 and was its president from 1855 to 1857.
^Baden-Powell, Tim Jeal, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 4
^A Scientific, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour- John (Fiott) Lee in Ireland, England and Wales 1806-1807, ed. Angela Byrne, Taylor & Francis, 2018, p. 6
^A Scientific, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour- John (Fiott) Lee in Ireland, England and Wales 1806-1807, ed. Angela Byrne, Taylor & Francis, 2018, p. 6
^Journal of the British Archaeological Association, British Archaeological Association, 1867, p. 305
^Report of the Council to the Forty-seventh Annual General Meeting of the Society, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 27, Issue 4, 8 February 1867, pp. 109–110., doi:10.1093/mnras/27.4.97a
^Baden-Powell, Tim Jeal, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 4
^Admissions to the College of St. John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge Part 3, ed. J. E. B. Mayor, R. F. Scott, Cambridge University Press, 1931, p. 249
