CRICHTON,
a surname assumed from the barony of that name in the county of
Edinburgh, and amongst the first mentioned by historians in the
reign of Malcolm the Third. To the charter of erection of the abbacy
of Holyroodhouse, by King David the First, Thurstannus de Creichton
is a witness. William de Crichton is mentioned as dominus de
Crichton about 1240. Thomas de Crichton, supposed to be his son, was
one of those barons who swore fealty to Edward the First in 1296. By
Eda his wife he had three sons. William, the second son, acquired by
marriage with Isabel de Ross, one of the two daughters and
coheiresses of Robert de Ross (a cadet of the earls of Ross, lords
of the Isles), half of the barony of Sanquhar in Dumfries-shire. The
other half was subsequently purchased by his successors, and it
became the chief title of the family. Sir Robert de Crichton of
Sanquhar, a descendant of this William de Crichton, had charters of
the barony of Sanquhar, and of the office of sheriff of the county
of Dumfries, 23d April 1464; of the lands of Eliock, 21st
October same year; and of the office of coroner of Nithsdale, 8th
January 1468-9. His eldest son, Sir Robert Crichton of Sanquhar,
signalized himself at Lochmaben against the duke of Albany and the
earl of Douglas, when they invaded Scotland in 1484. He was created
a peer of parliament by the title of Lord Crichton of Sanquhar, by
King James the Third, 29th January, 1487-8, and died in
1502. See SANQUHAR, Lord. The title is now merged in the earldom of
Dumfries [see DUMFRIES, earl of], now held by the marquis of Bute.
[See BUTE, marquis of ante.]
the name
Crichton may probably be a corruption of Caerric-ton, (as Cramond is
of Caer-almond,) and be therefore a variety of Ric-caer-ton, – the
stone place of the Ric-ton, or rich land. Many local names appear in
the Lothians to be corruptions of Caer of place of stones.
_____
CRICHTON, Lord, a title conferred in 1445, on Sir William
Crichton, lord high chancellor of Scotland, of whom a memoir is
subsequently given below. He was a descendant of the above-mentioned
William de Crichton, and the son of Sir John Crichton, who obtained
a charter of the barony of Crichton from King Robert the Third. His
cousin, Sir George de Crichton, high admiral of Scotland, (designed
son and heir of Stephen Crichton of Cairns, brother of the said Sir
John Crichton,) was in 1452 created earl of Caithness, the honours
being limited to the heirs male of his own body by his second wife,
Janet Borthwick. He died in 1455, without issue of his second
marriage, and the title became extinct in his family (see CAITHNESS,
earl of). The first Lord Crichton had a son and two daughters.
James, the
son, second Lord Crichton, was knighted by James the First, at the
baptism of his eldest son in 1430. He married Lady Janet Dunbar,
eldest daughter and coheiress of James earl of Moray, with whom he
got the barony of Frendraught in Banffshire, but the earldom of
Moray was, to his prejudice, bestowed on Archibald Douglas, (third
son of the seventh earl of Douglas,) who had married the younger
sister of his wife. Under the designation of Sir James Crichton of
Frendraught, he was appointed great chamberlain of Scotland in 1440,
and his held that office till 1453. He died about 1469. He had three
sons, William, Gavin, and George.
William,
the third lord, joined the duke of Albany in his rebellion against
his brother, James the Third, and garrisoned his castle of Crichton
in his behalf. He was in consequence attainted for treason, by
parliament, 24th February 1483-4. His brothers were also
forfeited for joining in the same rebellion. On his forfeiture, his
castle of Crichton, a very ancient and magnificent structure, the
ruins of which overhang a beautiful little glen through which the
Tyne slowly meanders, was granted to Sir John Ramsay of Balmain.
From him it afterwards passed, by forfeiture, to Patrick Hepburn,
chief of that name, and third Lord Hales, ancestor of the celebrated
James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell, the husband of Mary queen of Scots.
On the forfeiture of this last nobleman in 1567, Crichton became the
property of the Crown, but was granted to Francis Stewart, earl of
Bothwell. It subsequently passed through the hands of several
proprietors, from one of whom, Hepburn of Humbie, who acquired it
about the year 1649, it obtained the name, among the county people,
of ‘Humbie’s Wa’s.’ In the fourth canto of Marmion, Sir Walter Scott
has minutely described this relic of the feudal ages.
The third
lord had married Margaret, second daughter of King James the Second,
and had, with a daughter, a son, Sir James Crichton of Frendraught.
The direct descendant of the latter, in the fifth generation, James
Crichton of Frendraught was, in 1642, created Viscount Frendraught
and Lord Crichton, in consideration of his father being heir male of
Lord-chancellor Crichton. See FRENDRAUGHT, viscount of.
_____
The other
principal families of the name were Crichton of Cranston, descended
from Frendraught; (David Crichton of Cranston was one of the
commissioners nominated by King James the Third, in his treaty of
marriage with Margaret daughter of the king of Denmark); Crichton of
Ruthven, descended from the second son of Stephen Crichton of Cairns
above mentioned; Crichton of Easthill; Crichton of Naughton;
Crichton of Cluny; Crichton of Invernyty; Crichton of Brunston;
Crichton of Lugdon; and Crichton of Crawfordtoun.
George
Crichton, a son of Crichton of Naughton, became bishop of Dunkeld in
1525, having previously been abbot of Holyroodhouse. According to
Spotswood, he succeeded the celebrated Gavin Douglas in that see,
but this is a mistake, as another prelate, named Robert Cockburn,
intervened between them. In the beginning of 1527, he was one of
the bishops present at St. Andrews at the condemnation of Patrick
Hamilton, the protomartyr. In 1529, he is said to have been lord
privy seal, and to have held the same office in the beginning of
1539. He appears as an extraordinary lord of session in the sitting
of that court, November 17, 1533. He died on 24th January
1543-4, having previously transmitted to the pope a resignation of
his bishopric in favour of his nephew Robert Crichton, then provost
of St. Giles. It was this bishop of Dunkeld that in 1539, on the
examination of Dean Thomas Forret, vicar of Dollar, accused of
heresy, said he thanked God that he never knew what the old and the
new Testament was, and that he would know nothing but his breviary
and his pontifical! His nephew, Robert Crichton, notwithstanding his
uncle’s resignation in his favour, and his own application, was
prevented from immediately succeeding to the see, by the stronger
influence of the earl of Arran, governor of the kingdom, upon whose
natural brother, John Hamilton, it was conferred, but on his
translation to the archbishopric of St. Andrews in 1550, Crichton
was promoted to Dunkeld, and continued bishop there till the
establishment of the Reformed religion in 1560. At the parliament,
wherein the Confession of Faith was ratified, 17th July
of that year, he was appointed a commissioner for divorcing the earl
of Bothwell from Lady Jane Gordon.
Robert
Crichton of Eliock, the father of the admirable Crichton, (of whom a
memoir is hereafter given in its place,) having been educated for
the bar, was appointed lord advocate, jointly with John Spens of
Condie, 8th February 1560. He appears to have been
favourable to Queen Mary’s cause in the beginning of her son’s
reign, and was sent for by that unfortunate princess into England
after the death of the regent Murray, but was prevented from going
by the regent Lennox, who made him find caution to the extent of
four thousand pounds Scots, that he would not leave Edinburgh. On
the death in January 1581, of David Borthwick of Lochill, who had
succeeded Spens as his colleague, and was appointed a lord of
session in October 1573, Crichton was nominated his successor on the
bench, and at the same time was constituted sole lord advocate. He
took his seat 1st February 1581. In the same year he was
appointed one of the parliamentary commissioners for the reformation
of hospitals. He died in June 1582.
An account
of the feud betwixt the Crichtons and the Maxwells, the two most
powerful barons in Nithsdale, will be found under the head of
SANQUHAR, lord. In 1512, Sir William Douglas of Drumlanrig, ancestor
of the noble house of Queensberry, accused of the slaughter of
Robert Crichton of Kilpatrick, on the complaint of Robert Lord
Crichton of Sanquhar, pleaded that the person killed was at the time
a declared rebel and at his majesty’s horn, when the jury delivered
a verdict freeing h im and his accomplices from the charge. This
case is thought to have given rise to the subsequent “Act anent the
Resset of Rebellis.” &c., in which it is expressly stated that “gif
ony personis happins to committ slauchter upone the said rebellis
and personis being at the horne, the tym of the taking or
apprehending of them, sal be no point of dittay (indictment), bot
the slaaris of them to be rewardit and thankit tharfore.” On October
24, 1526, Andrew Crichton of Crawfordtoun, John Crichton of
Kilpatrick, and forty-six others, were denounced rebels and put to
the horn for not appearing to underly the law for the convocation of
the lieges in great numbers in arms, and attacking Archibald earl of
Angus and James earl of Arran, his majesty’s lieutenants, near the
church of Linlithgow, for their slaughter and destruction. On
November 24th, 1536, Mariota Home, countess of Crawford,
the widow of that earl who was slain at Flodden, and Patrick
Crichton of Camnay, with seventeen others, found caution (namely,
Sir John Stirling of Keir, and John Crichton of Cranstoun) to
satisfy John Moncur of Balluny, for seizing a “wayne” or waggon from
him, with four oxen and two horses; and on the 12th
December following, the same John Moncur, with Mariota Douglas, his
wife, and four others, found caution to underly the law at the next
justice-aire of Perth, for oppression done to the countess of
Crawford, in breaking up the soil and ditches of her lands of
Potento, and wounding her in the throat. This shows a strange state
of society at that period.
One of the
leading friends of Wishart the martyr and most resolute conspirators
against Cardinal Bethune, was Crichton of Brunston in Mid Lothian.
He had been at one time a familiar and confidential servant of the
cardinal, who, on the 10th of December 1539, intrusted
him with secret letters to Rome, which were intercepted by Henry the
Eighth. He next attached himself to Arran the governor, who employed
him in diplomatic missions to France and England. He afterwards
gained the confidence of Sir Ralph Sadler, the English ambassador in
Scotland, to whom he furnished secret intelligence, and subsequently
entered into correspondence with King Henry himself. On the 17th
of April 1544, the laird of Brunston is said to have engaged in that
secret correspondence with Henry the Eighth, in which, on certain
conditions, he offered to procure the assassination of Bethune.
Tytler points his character in very dark colours, but his
representations should undoubtedly be taken with considerable
reservation. [See his History of Scotland, vol. v.
Appendix, p. 453.] Among others who were banished by the regent
Arran, and his natural brother, the archbishop of St. Andrews, for
alleged crimes against the state, but in reality on account of their
professing the reformed religion, was Crichton of Brunston. Soon
after the assassination of the cardinal he was indicted on a charge
of treason, but the process against him was afterwards withdrawn.
_____
Two
eminent medical men of this surname were long in the service of
Russia. 1. Sir Alexander Crichton, M.D., F.R.S., &c., son of
Alexander Crichton, Esq. of Newington, Mid Lothian, and grandson of
Patrick Crichton, Esq. of Woodhouselee and Newington, born at
Edinburgh in 1763, was physician in ordinary to the emperor of
Russia, and physician to the duke of Cambridge. Author of, ‘An
Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement,
comprehending a concise system of the Physiology and Pathology of
the human mind, and a History of the Passions, and their effects,’
Lond. 1798, 2 vols. 8vo.; ‘A Synoptical Table of Diseases,
exhibiting their arrangement in Classes, Orders, Genera, and
Species, designed for the use of Students,’ Lond; 1805, large sheet;
‘An Account of some Experiments made with the vapour of boiling Tar
in the Cure of Pulmonary Consumption,’ 1818; ‘Some Observations on
the Medicinal Effects of Arnica Montana,’ London Medical Journal,
vol. x. p. 236, &c.; ‘Some Observations on the Medicinal Effects of
the Lichislandicus,’ Ibid. p. 229; Commentary on some Doctrines of a
dangerous Tendency in Medicine, 8vo, 1842, &c. Knight grand cross of
the Russian orders of St. Vladimir and St. Anne, and knight of the
red eagle of Prussia, second class; he was knighted on his return to
England in 1820, was an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences
of St. Petersburg, a corresponding member of the Royal Institute of
Medicine in Paris, of the Royal Society of Sciences in Gottingen,
&c. He was descended from a younger branch of the house of
Frendraught. He died in 1856. 2. His nephew, Sir Archibald William
Crichton, eldest son of Captain Patrick Crichton of the 47th
regiment; born in 1791, graduated J.D. at Edinburgh, and was thirty
years in the Russian service, for twenty-four of which he was
physician to the czar and his family; He was a member of the medical
council in Russia and a councillor of state. in 1814 he received the
star of the legion of honour; in 1817 he was knighted; in 1829 he
received the grand cross of the red eagle of Prussia, second class;
in 1832, that of St. Stanislaus, first class; in 1834, that of St.
Anne, first class; and in 1836, that of St. Vladimir. In 1820 he
married a daughter of Dr. Sutthoff, one of the physicians in
ordinary to the emperor of Russia. A member of the
Medico-Chirurgical Academy of St. Petersburg (1853), M.D. of
Glasgow, and D.C.L. of Oxford.
_____
The family
of Makgill of Rankeillor in Fife, assumed the additional surname of
Crichton in 1839, in consequence of the then proprietor of that
estate, David Maitland Makgill-Crichton, being, in June of that
year, served heir of line in general to the first Viscount
Frendraught; his ancestor, Sir James Makgill of Rankeillor, having
married, in 1665, the Hon. Janet Crichton, daughter of the first
viscount. [See FRENDRAUGHT, viscount of, and MAKGILL, surname of.]
The noble
family of Crichton, who enjoy the earldom of erne, in the peerage of
Ireland, are also descended from a branch of the house of
Frendraught in the Scottish peerage.
CRICHTON, SIR
WILLIAM,
chancellor of Scotland during the minority of James the Second, was
a personage of great abilities and political address. In 1423 he
proceeded to Durham, with other barons, to conduct James the First
home after his long captivity. At the coronation of his majesty in
1424, he was knighted, and appointed chamberlain to the king. On 8th
May 1426, a commission was issued constituting him and two others
ambassadors to treat with Eric, king of Norway, for a lasting peace;
and soon after his return home, he was appointed one of the king’s
privy council, and master of the household. On the accession of
James the Second, he was in possession of the castle of Edinburgh.
Between him and Sir Alexander Livingston, of Callendar, there was an
unhappy rivalship, which weakened the authority of the government.
During the two years succeeding his coronation the young king
continued to reside entirely in the castle of Edinburgh, under the
care of Crichton, its governor, greatly to the displeasure of the
queen and her party, who thus found him placed entirely beyond their
control. She accordingly visited Edinburgh, professing great
friendship for Sir William Crichton, and a longing desire to see her
son, by which means she completely won the good will of the former,
and obtained ready access with her retinue, to visit the prince in
the castle and take up her abode there. At length, having lulled all
suspicion, she gave out that she had made a vow to pass in
pilgrimage to the white kirk of Brechin for the health of her son,
and bidding adieu to the governor over night, with many earnest
recommendations of the young king to his fidelity and care, she
retired to her devotions. Immediately on being left at liberty, the
young king was cautiously pinned up among the linen and furniture of
his mother, and so conveyed in a chest to Leith, and thence by water
to Stirling, and placed in the hands of Livingston. Immediately
thereafter, the latter raised an army and laid siege to Crichton in
the castle of Edinburgh; on which he applied to the earl of Douglas
for assistance, when that chief replied that he was an enemy to both
parties, and in consequence refused his aid. Thereupon Crichton and
Livingston became reconciled to each other, and having deprived
Cameron, bishop of Glasgow, a partisan of the house of Douglas, of
the office of chancellor, it was conferred upon Crichton, while
Livingston obtained the guardianship of the king’s person, and the
chief management in the government. Soon after, however, Crichton
seized the person of the young monarch in the royal park at Stirling,
while proceeding to the chase, and removed him to Edinburgh castle;
but a second reconciliation took place between him and Livingston.
Douglas died in 1439, and owing to the overgrown power of his son
who succeeded him, it was resolved to get rid of him by summary
means. With this view he invited him to attend a parliament then
about to be held at Edinburgh, and having inveigled him and his
brother into the castle, ordered them to be executed on the
Castle-hill. This took place in 1440. The new earl of Douglas having
been reconciled to James, and admitted into the royal councils,
Crichton immediately fled to the castle of Edinburgh; on which he
was denounced as a rebel, and his estates confiscated. Douglas laid
siege to the castle, and after an investment of nine weeks, Crichton
entered into a treaty with Livingston and Douglas, and surrendered
it to the king. In 1445 he was created Lord Crichton, and in 1448 he
was sent on an embassy to France, to treat with Arnold, duke of
Gueldres, for the marriage of his daughter Mary with his royal
master, now in his eighteenth year. He accompanied the bride to
Holyrood, where the nuptials were solemnized with much pomp. douglas
afterwards endeavoured to assassinate the chancellor, who continued
to enjoy the king’s confidence and favour till his death in 1454.
CRICHTON, JAMES,
styled “The Admirable,” from his extraordinary endowments both
mental and physical, was the son of Robert Crichton of Eliock, lord
advocate of Scotland in the reigns of Queen Mary and James the
Sixth, and was born in 1557, or, according to some accounts, in
1560. His mother was Elizabeth Stuart, only daughter of Sir James
Stuart of Beith, a family collaterally descended from Murdoch, duke
of Albany, third son of Robert the Third, by Elizabeth Mure, and
uncle of James the First. Eliock-house, on Eliock-burn, in the vale
of the Nith, Dumfries-shire, is said to have been the birthplace of
the Admirable Crichton, and the apartment in which he was born is
carefully preserved in its original state. Soon after his birth, his
father sold Eliock to the Dalzells, afterwards earls of Carnwath,
and removed to an estate which he had acquired in the parish of
Clunie in Perthshire, a circumstance which h as occasioned the
castle of Clunie to be mistaken as the place of his nativity. He
received the rudiments of his education at Perth school, and
completed his studies at the university of St. Andrews, where he
took his degree of M.A. at the age of fourteen. Before he was
twenty, he had mastered the whole circle of the sciences,, and could
speak and write ten different languages besides his own. He also
excelled in riding, dancing, fencing, painting, singing, and playing
on all sorts of instruments. On leaving college he went abroad to
improve himself by travel. On his arrival at Paris, in compliance
with a custom of the age, he affixed placards on the gates of the
university, challenging the professors and learned men of the city
to dispute with him in all the branches of literature, art, and
science, and offering to give answers in any of the following
languages, viz. Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish,
French, Italian, English, Dutch, Flemish, and Slavonic, and either
in prose or verse, at the option of his antagonist. On the day
appointed three thousand auditors assembled. Fifty masters proposed
to him the most intricate questions, and with singular accuracy he
replied to them all in the language they required. Four celebrated
doctors of the church then ventured to dispute with him; but he
refuted every argument they advanced. A sentiment of terror mingled
itself with the admiration of the assembly. In the superstitious
feeling of those days they conceived him to be Antichrist! This
famous exhibition lasted from nine o’clock in the morning till six
at night. At the conclusion, the president expressed, in the most
flattering terms, their high sense of his talents and erudition, and
amid the acclamations of all present, bestowed on him a diamond ring
with a purse of gold. It was on this occasion that he was first
saluted with the proud title of “The Admirable Crichton!” During the
interval between giving the challenge, and the day appointed for
accepting it, we are told, that so far from preparing himself by
study, he had devoted his time almost entirely to amusements. The
day after the disputation, he attended a public tilting match in the
Louvre, and in presence of the princess of France and a great many
ladies, bore away the ring fifteen times, and “broke as many landes
on the Saracen.”
Crichton
afterwards appeared at Rome, and disputed in presence of the Pope,
when he again astonished and delighted the audience by the
universality of his attainments. He next went to Venice, where,
becoming acquainted with Aldus Manutius, the younger, he inscribed
to hi one of the four little Latin poems, which are all that remain
to prove the poetical powers of this “prodigy of nature,” as he was
styled by Imperialis. Having been presented to the doge and senate,
he made an oration before them of surpassing eloquence. Here also he
disputed on the most difficult subjects before the most eminent
literari of that city.
He arrived
in Padua in the month of March 1581. The professors of that
university assembled to do him honour, and on being introduced to
them, he made an extemporary poem in praise of the city, the
university, and the persons present, after which he sustained a
disputation with them for six hours, and at the conclusion delivered
an unpremeditated speech in praise of Ignorance, to the astonishment
of all who heard him. He subsequently offered to point out before
the same university the innumerable errors in the philosophy of
Aristotle, and to expose the ignorance of his commentators, as well
as to refute the opinions of certain celebrated mathematicians, and
that in the common logical method, or by numbers or mathematical
figures, and by a hundred different kinds of verses; and we are
assured that he performed that stupendous task to the admiration of
every one. After defeating in disputation a famous philosopher named
Archangelus Mercenarius, he proceeded to Mantua, where he challenged
in fight a gladiator, or prize-fighter, who had foiled the most
expert fencers in Europe, and had already slain three persons who
had entered the lists with him in that city. On this occasion the
duke and the whole court were spectators of the combat. Crichton
encountered his antagonist with so much dexterity and vigour that he
ran him through the body in three different places, of which wounds
he immediately expired. The victor generously bestowed the prize,
fifteen hundred pistoles, on the widows of the men who had been
killed by the gladiator. The duke of Mantua, struck with his talents
and acquirements, appointed him tutor to his son, Vincentio di
Gonzaga, a prince of turbulent disposition and licentious manners.
For the entertainment of his patron he composed a comedy, described
as a sort of ingenious satire on the follies and weaknesses of
mankind, in which he himself personated fifteen characters. But his
career was drawing to a close. One night during the festivity of the
Carnival in July 1582, or 1583, while he rambled about the streets
playing upon the guitar, he was attacked by six persons in masks.
With consummate skill he dispersed his assailants, and disarmed
their leader, who, pulling off his mask, begged his life,
exclaiming, “I am the prince, your pupil!” Crichton immediately fell
upon his knees and presenting his sword to the prince, expressed his
sorrow for having lifted it against him, saying that he had been
prompted by self-defence. The dastardly Gonzaga, inflamed with
passion at his discomfiture, or mad with wine, immediately plunged
the weapon into his heart. Thus prematurely was cut off “the
Admirable Crichton.” Some accounts declare that he was killed in the
thirty-second year of his age; but Imperialis asserts that he was
only in his twenty-second year at the time of his death, and this
fact is confirmed by Lord Buchan. His tragical end excited a great
and general lamentation. According to Sir Thomas Urquhart, the whole
court of Mantua went for nine months into mourning for him;
innumerable were the epitaphs and elegies that were stuck upon his
hearse; and portraits of him, in which he was represented on
horseback with a sword in one hand, and a book in the other, were
multiplied in every quarter. Such are the romantic details which are
given of the life of this literary phenomenon. Dr. Kippis, in the
Biographia Britannica, was the first to call in question the truth
of the marvellous stories related of him. But Mr. Patrick Fraser
Tytler, in his Life of Crichton, published in 1823, has adduced the
most satisfactory evidence to establish the authenticity of the
testimonies and authorities on which the statements regarding
Crichton rest.
The
following woodcut is from a portrait of the Admirable Crichton in
the Iconographia Scotica:
Dr. Clarke gives the following list of his works, but does not
say when or where they were published:
Opera; 1. Odae ad Laurentium Massam plures. 2. Landes
Patavinae, Carmen extempore effusum, cum in Jacobi Aloysii Cornelii
domo experimentum ingenii, coran tota Academiae frequentia, non sine
multorum stupore faceret. 3. Ignorationis Laudatio, extemporale
Thema, ibidem redditum post sex horarum disputationes, ut, presentes
somnia potius fovere quam rem se veram videre affirmarunt ait
Manutius. 4. De appulsu suo Venetias. 5. Odae ad Aldum Manutium. 6.
Epistolae ad Diversos. 7. Praefationes solennes in omnes scientias,
sacras et profanas. 8. Judicium de Philosophia. 9. Errores
Arisotelis. 10. arma an Literae praestant? Controversia Oratoria.
11. Refutatio Mathematicorum. 12. A Comedy in the Italian Language.
CRICHTON, GEORGE,
an author of considerable merit in the seventeenth century, was
professor of Greek in the university of Paris. He was a native of
Scotland, but very little is known of his personal history. He wrote
several poems and orations in the Latin language.
CRICHTON, or CREYGHTON, ROBERT,
a learned prelate, was born of an ancient family, at Dunkeld, in
Perthshire, in 1593. He was educated at Westminster school, whence,
in 1613, he was elected to Trinity college, Cambridge, where he took
his degrees in arts, and was chosen Greek professor and university
orator. In 1632 he was made treasurer of the cathedral of Wells, of
which he was canon residentiary. He was also prebendary of Taunton,
and had a living in Somersetshire. In 1637 he was admitted to the
degree of D.D. In the beginning of the civil wars he joined the
king’s troops at Oxford. But he was obliged afterwards to escape
into Cornwall, in the dress of a day-labourer. He subsequently found
his way to the Continent, when Charles the Second employed him as
his chaplain, and bestowed on him the deanery of Wells, of which he
took possession at the restoration. In 1670, he was promoted to the
see of Bath and Wells, which he held till his death, November 21,
1672. His only publication was a translation from Greek into Latin
of Sylvester Sguropulus’s History of the Council of Florence,
printed at the Hague, 1660. Wood says some of his Sermons were also
in print.
