Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blake, Charles

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
1311900Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 05 — Blake, Charles1886Ronald Bayne

BLAKE, CHARLES, D.D. (1664–1730), divine and poet, was born at Reading, Berkshire, being the son of John Blake, ‘gent.,’ of that town, and educated at the Merchant Taylors’ School and St. John’s College, Oxford, of which he was scholar and afterwards fellow (B.A. 1683, M.A. 1687–8, D.D. 1696). He was domestic chaplain to Sir William Dawes, afterwards bishop of Chester and archbishop of York, who was his close friend. Among his preferments were the rectory of St. Sepulchre’s, London, of Wheldlake in Yorkshire, and of St. Mary's, Hull, and he was successively a prebendary of Chester, a prebendary of York (1716), and archdeacon of York (1720), He died 22 Nov. 1730. He published a small collection of Latin verses, consisting of a translation into Latin of the poem of Musæus on Hero and Leander, and of part of the fifth book of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost;’ and two original poems, one called ‘Hibernia Plorans,’ written in 1689, the year of the siege of Londonderry, deploring Ireland's woes, in the style of Virgil's Eclogues, and the other an elegy on the death, in 1688, of Frederick, the Great Elector of Brandenburg. These were all published together in a little sixpenny pamphlet, under the title of ‘Lusus Amatorius, sive Musæi de Herone et Leandro carmen; cui accedunt Tres Nugæ Poeticæ,’ at London in 1693.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses; Lists, &c. of Scholars of the Merchant Taylors' School, ed. Hessy; Robinson’s Register of Merchant Taylors' School, i. 296; Allen's History of Yorkshire; Ormerod's History of Cheshire]

R. B.

Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.29
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line

Page Col. Line  
169 i 8 f.e. Blake, Charles: for 1716 read April 1715