by Travers, although apparently it is not extant, which was translated, probably also by Cartwright, as ‘A Brief and Plaine Declaration concerning the desires of all those faithful ministers that have and do seeke for the discipline and reformation of the Church of England. At London, printed by Robert Walde-graue,’ 1584, 8vo (Brit. Mus.). If this book were not written by Travers, it was at any rate referred to him for revision (Bancroft, Dangerous Positions, 1693, p. 76), and was being reprinted at Cambridge in 1585 when all the copies at the university press were seized by Whitgift's order and burned. From one remaining in Cartwright's study a brief set of rules was compiled by a provincial synod (which Cartwright attended from Warwick) at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1589; these rules were subscribed in 1590 by five hundred ministers, and reprinted ‘by authority’ of the Westminster assembly as ‘A Directory of Church Government,’ London, 1644, and more recently in facsimile, with a valuable introduction by Peter Lorimer, London, 1872, 4to. It is the latter work which Soames (Elizabethan Relig. Hist.) and Dr. Dexter (Congregat. of Three Hundred Years) refer to as the ‘text-book of presbyterianism.’
John Travers (d. 1620), brother of the above, graduated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and was chosen fellow 1569. He died rector of Farringdon, Devonshire, 1620, leaving by his wife Alice Hooker four sons—Elias, Samuel, John, and Walter—who all took orders. The youngest, Walter Travers, chaplain to Charles I, rector of Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire, vicar of Wellington, Somerset, and rector of Pitminster, Devonshire, died 7 April 1646, and was buried in Exeter Cathedral; his son Thomas, M.A. of Magdalen College, 1644, lecturer at St. Andrews, Plymouth, was ejected from St. Columb Major, Cornwall, in 1662 (Palmer, Noncon. Mem. i. 349).
[Besides the authorities already given, see Wood's Fasti, i. 204; Nares's Life of Burghley, iii. 355; Heylyn's Hist. of Presbyterians, pp. 314 seq.; Strype's Annals, vol. iii. pt. i. pp. 179, 352–4, 413, 632, 493–4, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 277, pt. ii. p. 174; Elrington's Life of Usher, i. 15, 16; Soames's Elizabethan Relig. Hist. pp. 382, 395, 443, 444–5, 456; Borlase's Reduction of Ireland, pp. 147–9; Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors, p. 471; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1628–9, p. 542; Killen's Eccl. Hist. of Ireland, i. 452; Urwick's Early Hist. of Trin. Coll. Dublin, p. 17; Hunt's Religious Thought in England, i. 61–73. A valuable account of the ‘Disciplina’ is given in App. C. p. 631 of Mullinger's Hist. of Cambridge, but the edition of 1644 of the Directory of Church Government is treated as a new translation of the earlier work. Roger Morrice's manuscript Account of Nonconformity, in three folio volumes with index, in Dr. Williams's Libr.; cf. arts. Cartwright, Thomas, and Hooker, Richard.]
TRAVIS, GEORGE (1741–1797), archdeacon of Chester, only son of John Travis of Heyside, near Shaw, Lancashire, by Hannah his wife, was born in 1741, and educated by his uncle, the Rev. Benjamin Travis, incumbent of Royton, Lancashire, and at the Manchester grammar school, which he entered in January 1756. He matriculated from St. John's College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1761, and graduated B.A. in 1765 and M.A. in 1768. He was fifth senior optime and chancellor's senior medallist in 1765. He was ordained in that year, was appointed vicar of Eastham, Cheshire, in 1766, and rector of Handley in the same county in 1787, and he held both benefices till his death. In 1783 he was made a prebendary of Chester Cathedral, and in 1786 archdeacon of Chester. He is described as a ‘gentleman and scholar,’ and is said to have been ‘familiarly acquainted with the law of tithes.’ He came into prominence in 1784 by the publication of his ‘Letters to Edward Gibbon,’ in defence of the genuineness of the disputed verse in St. John's First Epistle, v. 7, which speaks of the three heavenly witnesses. The first edition was printed at Chester, the second in London in 1785, and the third and enlarged edition in 1794. He is remembered chiefly by having called forth Porson as an antagonist. The great critic's famous ‘Letters to Archdeacon Travis in Answer to Defence of the Three Heavenly Witnesses’ appeared in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ in 1788–9, and were republished in 1790. An additional letter is given by Kidd in his edition of Porson's ‘Tracts, &c.’ (1815). Gibbon himself said ‘the brutal insolence of Mr. Travis's challenge can only be excused by the absence of learning, judgment, and humanity.’ Porson's answer to the ‘wretched Travis’ is justly described by Gibbon as ‘the most acute and accurate piece of criticism which has appeared since the days of Bentley.’ Travis was also attacked by Herbert Marsh in his ‘Letters to Mr. Archdeacon Travis,’ 1795 (cf. Baker, St. John's College, ed. Mayor, 1869, ii. 757).
Travis married, in 1766, Ann, daughter of James Stringfellow of Whitfield, Derbyshire, and died without issue on 24 Feb. 1797 at Hampstead. A monument, with a profile portrait, was erected to him in Chester Cathedral. Two miniature portraits of Travis were in the possession of
