strained to resign his mastership in 1537, and retired to his living of Woodham Ferris, where he died in 1539. His will, which was proved 16 Oct. 1539, contains bequests of forty shillings to St. John's College for a 'Dirige' and a mass; legacies to his sisters, Elizabeth, Alice, Jane, &c.; the residue being left for the maintenance of poor scholars in Cambridge.
[Baker's Hist. of St. John's College, ed. Mayor; Aschami Epistolæ; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 62.]
METCALFE, ROBERT (1590?–1652), fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, son of Alexander Metcalfe of Beverley, Yorkshire, was educated at the grammar school in that town, and at Michaelmas 1605 his father appears to have received from the corporation the sum of ten shillings 'to the use of his son at Cambridge' (Poulson, Beverley, p. 453). On 10 April 1606 Robert was admitted a fellow of St. John's College, and on the festival of St. Mark 1616 he was elected a preacher of the same society. Some time prior to 1645 he succeeded Andrew Byng of St. John's College as regius professor of Hebrew, but at what date is not known. In 1648 he vacated the chair, and was succeeded by Ralph Cudworth [q. v.] His retirement stands apparently in some connection with his election to a fellowship at Trinity in the same year; he was also appointed catechiser and vice-master of the society in October. On 14 Aug. 1646 he was appointed lecturer in Hebrew. Duport, in his 'Epicedia,' speaks of him as a man of singularly retired habits, leading a solitary life among his books in his college chamber (Musæ Subsecivae, p. 492). Nicholas Hookes [q. v.] of Trinity College, who composed two elegies, one Latin and one English, to his memory, and who styles him 'sagax vice-praesul' and 'cardinalis presbyter' (i.e. head of the clerical members of the foundation), says that he was distinguished by his numerous charities, and especially by his liberality to poor deserving students (Amanda, pp. 121-3). Metcalfe, however, is chiefly remembered by his benefactions to the grammar school where he received his education. By his will (9 Oct. 1652) he bequeathed to 'three poor scholars of the school of Beverley, for their better maintenance at the university, to every one of them 6l. 13s. 4d.,' with the proviso that 'no son of any of the aldermen, or of any of sufficient ability to maintain their children at the university, should be capable of that maintenance.' To his sister, Prudence Metcalfe, he also bequeathed 20l. yearly; to the schoolmaster 10l., and to the 'preacher or lecturer' of Beverley 10l.; to St. John's College, 'gratitudinis ergo,' 100l.; to the university library 20l. His arms, with a few lines respecting him, are in the 'Liber Memorialis' of Trinity College.
[Registers of Trinity College and St. John's College, Cambridge; Baker's Hist, of St. John's College; J. Duport's Musae Subsecivæ.]
METCALFE, THEOPHILUS (fl. 1649), stenographer, was a professional writer and teacher of shorthand, who in 1645 resided in St. Katherine's Court, near the Tower of London. He published a stenographic system based almost entirely on the lines of Thomas Shelton's 'Tachygraphy.' The first edition of his work was entitled 'Radio-Stenography, or Short Writing' and is supposed to have been published in 1635. A so-called sixth edition appeared at London in 1645, 12mo. It was followed in 1649 by 'A Schoolmaster to Radio-Stenography, explaining all the Rules of the said Art, by way of Dialogue betwixt Master and Scholler, fitted to the weakest capacities that are desirous to learne this Art.' Many editions of the system appeared under the title of 'Short Writing: the most easie, exact, lineall, and speedy Method that hath ever yet been obtained or taught by any in this Kingdome.' On the title-page of the nineteenth edition (1679) it is asserted that 'a young man, that lately lived at Cornhill, learned so well by this book that he wrote out all the Bible in this character.' The statement is repeated on the title-page of the fifty-fifth edition, printed for Edmund Parker at the Bible and Crown in Lombard Street about 1756. In reality these editions, as they are called, were for the most part only small numbers of copies taken from the same plates at different times, the dates being as often altered as the title. These plates were engraved by Frederick Henry Van Hove of Haarlem (Shorthand, i. 81, 82). A copy of the Bible written in Metcalfe's system by Dr. William Holder [q. v.], and completed in 1668, is preserved in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 30385). Dr. Isaac Watts was also a writer of this system.
A portrait of Metcalfe is prefixed to the so-called sixth edition of his 'Radio-Stenography,' published in 1645.
[Anderson's Hist. of Shorthand, p. 114; Gibson's Bibliography of Shorthand, pp. 12, 96, 129; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 5th edit. iii. 194; Journalist, 25 March 1887, p. 381; Levy's Hist. of Shorthand, p. 30; Lewis's Hist. of Shorthand, pp. 65–9; Rockwell's Literature of Shorthand, 2nd edit. p. 109; Shorthand, i. 50, ii. 10, 55.]
