Owen in a preface to some sermons of W. Bridge, and by ‘D. T.’ in ‘Hieragonisticon; or Corah's Doom,’ Lond. 1672, 12mo. Eachard replied to the first of his assailants in ‘Some Observations upon the Answer to an Enquiry into …; with some additions. In a second Letter to R. L.,’ Lond. 1671, 12mo. The original work is reprinted in ‘An English Garner,’ edited by Edward Arber, vol. vii. (1883), and it was translated into German by Johann Gustav Reinbeck under the title of ‘Untersuchung der Ursachen und Gelegenheiten, welche zur Verachtung der Geistlichen und der Religion Anlass gegeben,’ Berlin, 1740, 12mo. Macaulay, in the ‘History of England,’ largely quoted Eachard in his account of the social condition of the clergy about the time of the accession of James II. This led to the publication of ‘Mr. Macaulay's Character of the Clergy in the latter part of the 17th century considered,’ Cambridge, 1849, 8vo, by the Rev. Churchill Babington, M.A., fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who says that Eachard's book ‘from beginning to end is a series of jocose caricatures. He burlesques unmercifully the sermons of sundry injudicious and ignorant clergymen, and draws the most facetious picture of the extremities to which others were reduced by poverty, and he has done it in such a manner that he was perhaps not very unnaturally supposed to have meant his descriptions for the clergy generally, and to have made up his book for the express purpose of bringing them into contempt.’ 2. ‘Mr. Hobb's State of Nature considered: in a Dialogue between Philautus and Timothy. To which are added Five Letters from the Author of the Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy,’ Lond. 1672, 12mo, dedicated to Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury. 3. ‘Some Opinions of Mr. Hobbs considered in a second Dialogue between Philautus and Timothy. By the same Author,’ 1673. Sir Richard Blackmore, in his ‘Essay on Wit,’ recommends these dialogues, in which he observes: ‘There is a kind of vein of solid learning mixed with many strokes of raillery.’ 4. ‘A Free and Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of that very great Esteem and Honour that the Nonconforming Preachers are generally in with their Followers. In a Letter to his honoured friend, H. M. By a Lover of the Church of England and unfeigned Piety,’ 1673, 12mo. This is attributed to Eachard in the British Museum Catalogue. Thomas Broughton, in the ‘Biographia Britannica,’ says, however, that after an inspection of the piece he was convinced it was not written by Eachard. It has not his wit, nor is it in any respect in his manner.
Eachard's works, except his second dialogue on the writings of Hobbes, have been several times printed together in one volume 8vo; but the most complete edition containing that dialogue is that published by T. Davies in 3 vols. 12mo, 1774. Though Eachard was a great wit and humorist, he failed lamentably when he attempted to treat a subject in a serious manner. Thomas Baker, the Cambridge antiquary, has recorded that he went to St. Mary's, with great expectation, to hear Eachard preach, and was never more disappointed (Granger, Biog. Hist. of England, 5th edit. v. 38 n.); and Dean Swift remarks: ‘I have known men happy enough at ridicule, who, upon grave subjects, were perfectly stupid; of which Dr. Eachard of Cambridge, who writ “The Contempt of the Clergy,” was a great instance’ (Works, xii. 279).
[Life by Zachary Grey in Cole's MS. 12, f. 234; Life by T. Davies, prefixed to Eachard's Works, ed. 1774; Biog. Brit. (Kippis); Addit. MSS. 5868, f. 8, 19165, f. 304; Birch's Tillotson (1752), p. 326; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Halkett and Laing's Dict. of Anon. Lit. ii. 1673; Heywood's Diaries, ii. 258; Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, xiv. 305; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn), p. 707; Macaulay's Hist. of England; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vi. 426–8; Nichols's Suppl. to Swift's Works, Lond. 1779, ii. 366; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. i. 320, 404, 2nd ser. ii. 492, iii. 109, 6th ser. v. 387, 452, vi. 37; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (1813), i. p. lxx.]
EACHARD, LAURENCE (1670?–1730), historian. [See Echard.]
EADBALD, ÆODBALD, ÆTHELBALD, or AUDUWALD (d. 640), king of Kent, son of Æthelberht, refused to accept christianity during his father's lifetime, was a heathen when he succeeded him as king of the Kentishmen in 616, and, according to heathen custom, took his father's wife to be his wife. He was subject to occasional fits of madness. The bishops Mellitus and Justus fled to Gaul to escape persecution; Laurentius of Canterbury was warned in a dream against following their example, and succeeded in converting the king to christianity. Eadbald broke off his incestuous connection, was baptised, and sent for Mellitus and Justus to return. Justus he reinstated at Rochester, but he could not prevail on the Londoners to receive back Mellitus, and he could not force them to do so, for he was not as strong as his father had been and had lost the supremacy over the East-Saxons. Nor was he able to insist on the destruction of idols even among his own people, a work that was carried out by his
