Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/206

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assist in the prosecution of William Tyndale, the translator of the Bible into English, who was then in prison at Vilvoorde. He and another Englishman, named Harry Philippes, busied themselves in translating into Latin the English papers found in Tyndale's possession, which were useful as evidence of heresy. No further particulars of his life appear to have been recorded, except that he was the author of a book ‘De Reconciliatione locorum Sacræ Scripturæ,’ of which a copy was in the English College at Rome. Foxe tells us that he was nicknamed ‘Domine labia,’ but does not mention the reason why he was so called. A Dr. William Bokenham, who was master of Gonville Hall from 1514 to 1536, has sometimes been confused with the subject of this notice, and Tanner's statement that Robert Buckenham was chancellor of the university of Cambridge is an error of the same kind, Dr. William Buckmaster having held the office of vice-chancellor in 1529.

[Cal. of State Papers of Hen. VIII, vol. vii.; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Foxe, edit. 1847, vii. 449, 771; MS. Cott. Galba B. x. f. 102; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. i. 61; Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, ii. 102, &c.; Demaus's Latimer, 68; Tanner MS. 402, Bibl. Bodl.]

C. T. M.

BUCKERIDGE or BUCKRIDGE, JOHN (1562?–1631), bishop of Rochester and of Ely, was the son of William Buckeridge and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Keblewhite of Basildon, Berkshire, and granddaughter of John Keblewhite, uncle of Sir Thomas White, the founder of Merchant Taylors' School and of St. John's College, Oxford. He was born at Draycot Cerne, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, about 1562, and was admitted at Merchant Taylors' School in 1573, and elected thence a foundation fellow of St. John's, Oxford, in 1578. Here he took the degree of B.A. in 1583, M.A. in 1586, and B.D. and D.D. by accumulation in 1597, ultimately succeeding to the presidentship of the college in 1605. While Buckeridge was still a fellow William Laud was entered at St. John's. Buckeridge became his tutor, and instilled into his pupil high-church and anti-Calvinistic doctrine, opposed to the then prevalent theological bias of the university. Buckeridge was an Anglican of the school of Andrewes, equally opposed to Romanism and puritanism, calm but unflinching in the maintenance of his views of religious truth and ecclesiastical polity. ‘It proved,’ writes Heylyn, ‘no ordinary happiness to the scholar to be principled under such a tutor, who knew as well as any other of his time how to employ the two-edged sword of Holy Scripture, … brandishing it on the one side against the papists, and on the other against the puritans and nonconformists’ (Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicanus, pt. i. p. 44). Buckeridge's real merits became known to Archbishop Whitgift, and about 1596 he appointed him one of his chaplains. In this capacity he was one of those who attended the archbishop in his last sickness (February 1604), and heard his reiterated dying words, ‘Pro ecclesiâ Dei, pro ecclesiâ Dei’ (Strype, Whitgift, ii. 507). On leaving the university, he became rector of North Fambridge in Essex, and was appointed chaplain to Robert Devereux, the unfortunate earl of Essex, who made petition in his behalf to the then lord-keeper, Puckering, for small pieces of preferment in his gift (Strype, Annals, iv. 245; Wood, Athenæ, ii. 510). He was afterwards presented to the living of North Kilworth in Leicestershire, in which, in 1608, Laud succeeded him, though not immediately. Through Whitgift, Buckeridge was introduced to James I, and he speedily rose high in the royal favour. He was regarded by the king as one of the first pulpit divines of his day. He was now in the high road to preferment. After a long period of domination puritanism lost its influence. In Elizabeth's reign he had received a canonry at Rochester, in which capacity his name occurs in 1587. He was now appointed royal chaplain. In March 1604 he became archdeacon of Northampton; the next month he was installed prebendary of Colwall in the cathedral of Hereford; and in the November of the same year he was nominated by the king to succeed Lancelot Andrewes, on his consecration to the see of Chichester, in the well-endowed vicarage of St. Giles, Cripplegate, which he held in commendam after his elevation to the episcopate. The next year he was elected president of St. John's College, to which office he was admitted on 30 Jan. 1605. In April 1606 he was appointed canon of Windsor, and resigned his stall at Rochester. In September 1606 he was selected by James I, together with Bishops Andrewes and Barlow and Dr. King, afterwards bishop of London, to preach one of the sermons at Hampton Court designed to convince the learned presbyterians, Andrew and James Melville, of the scriptural authority of the episcopal form of church government, and of the royal supremacy. To Buckeridge the latter of the two subjects was assigned, which, according to Archbishop Spotiswood (Church Hist. of Scotland, bk. vii. p. 497; Heylyn, u. s., p. 44), he ‘handled both learnedly and soundly, to the satisfaction of all hearers,’ with the exception of the presbyterians, who were ‘much nettled at being equalled to the papists in matter of