Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/244

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trines, chiefly in the south of England, and his success again brought him under the notice of the privy council. On 24 May 1546 two yeomen of the chamber were sent to arrest him, with what success does not appear (Acts P. C. ed. Dasent, 1542–7, p. 424). In any case, the accession of Edward VI soon restored him to liberty, and during his reign he was appointed vicar of Settrington in Yorkshire. He was one of the candidates suggested by Cranmer on 25 Aug. 1552 for the archbishopric of Armagh (Cranmer, Works, ii. 438; Lit. Remains of Edward VI, ii. 488; Strype, Cranmer, i. 393, ii. 906). On Mary's accession Wisdom fled abroad, ultimately settling at Frankfort, where he sided with Coxe in his defence of the English liturgy against Knox and William Whittingham [q. v.] In 1559 he returned to England, and in the autumn was restored to his living at Settrington (Strype, Annals, i. i. 246). On 29 Feb. 1559–60 he was collated to the archdeaconry of Ely (Le Neve, Fasti, i. 352), to which were annexed the rectories of Haddenham and Wilburton. He preached at court on 27 March 1560, and at St. Paul's Cross on 7 April (Machyn, pp. 229, 230), and in the convocation of 1562 voted for the six puritan articles (Strype, Annals, i. i. 489, 504; Burnet, Reformation, ed. Pocock, ii. ii. 481). He died in September 1568, and was buried at Wilburton on the 28th, and not, as has been supposed, in Carfax, Oxford (Fletcher, Hist. of St. Martin's, 1896, p. 55). Margaret Wisdom, who was buried at Wilburton on 24 Sept. 1567, was probably his wife; and the names of four children also occur in Wilburton parish register.

Wisdom's ‘Postill … upon every Gospell through the year … translated from Ant. Corvinus,’ was published at London (1549, 4to). His metrical translation of the 125th Psalm was in use as late as 1693, and a metrical prayer is prefixed to the old version of the Psalms at the end of Barker's bible (see Boswell, Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, v. 444). He also wrote some verses upon the death of the dukes of Suffolk, 1551, and others prefixed to the second edition of Bale's ‘Scriptores.’ Among the manuscripts at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, are Wisdom's ‘Revocation of his Retractation,’ ‘Summ of all such doctrine’ as he had preached, and translation of two sermons by Tilemann ‘Heshusius.’ His expositions upon the Psalms and Ten Commandments, which do not appear to have survived, were of some repute among early reformers, though his poetic defects earned him the ridicule of Sir John Denham, Sir Thomas Overbury, Sir John Birkenhead, and Samuel Butler (Warton, Hist. Engl. Poetry, iii. 149, 150; Brydges, Cens. Lit. x. 12), while Bishop Corbet addresses him (Poems, ed. Gilchrist, p. 228) as

Thou once a body, now but air,
Archbotcher of a psalm or prayer,
From Carfax come.

[Authorities cited in text and in Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 259–61; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Ritson's Bibl. Anglo-Poetica; Gough's General Index to Parker Soc. Publ.; Strype's works (General Index); Foxe's Actes and Mon. ed. Townsend; Fletcher's Hist. of St. Martin's, Oxford, pp. 53–5; Rawlinson MS. C 21 f. 205; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vii. 80, 3rd ser. ii. 89, 9th ser. v. 473.]

A. F. P.

WISE, FRANCIS (1695–1767), archæologist, son of Francis Wise, mercer, of Oxford, was born in the parish of All Saints, Oxford, on 3 June 1695. He was educated at New College school and at Trinity College, Oxford, being admitted commoner on 3 Jan. 1710–11. He became scholar of his college on 31 May 1711, probationer fellow on 12 June 1718, and full fellow a year later. He graduated B.A. 1714, M.A. 1717, and B.D. 1727. In December 1719 he was appointed under-keeper of the Bodleian Library, and about this time he collated a manuscript in the Laud collection for the 1729 edition of Plutarch's ‘Lives.’

Wise was ordained deacon by the bishop of Oxford at Cuddesdon on 3 Sept. 1721, and priest at the public ordination at Oxford on 24 Sept. 1721. He took pupils at this time, and among them was Francis North (afterwards Baron and Earl of Guilford), who conferred on him in 1723 the curacy of Wroxton in Oxfordshire, and bestowed on him early in 1726 the small donative of Elsfield, about three miles from Oxford, where he much improved the residence and laid out the grounds in a fantastic manner. A view of the place is given in the tailpiece of the preface to his work on coins (1750). Later in 1726 the same patron presented him to the vicarage of Harlow in Essex, but after a few months he resigned the living, as he preferred to dwell at Oxford, where he had been appointed in April 1726 to the post of keeper of the archives.

On 2 Dec. 1729 Wise stood for the librarianship at the Bodleian Library, but after a party contest, in which he was the whig candidate, was defeated by fifteen votes (Rel. Hearnianæ, 1857 edit. ii. 711–713). His connection with the library did not thereupon cease, for so late as 1746 special payments were made to him for