Psalter was translated by Bede, and other portions of the Scriptures by an (arch)bishop of York. This statement must have occurred in the introductory portion now lost. He also says (in his manuscript referred to below) that the book existed in Queen's College, Oxford, but this is probably a mistake for Merton College. The tract contains six sections devoted to as many arguments against the allowance of the Scriptures in the vernacular; and is possibly the earliest extant statement in English controversy of the opponent's case.
The first argument is that the use of the vernacular would quickly lead to multiplication of erroneous copies, while Latin copies, being written and read in the universities, are easily corrected. 2. That human understanding is insufficient for all the difficulties of Scripture. The knowledge of God is better gained by meditation and prayer than by reading. 3. That in the celestial hierarchy the angels of lower order depend for illumination upon angels of higher order, who convey to them God's revelations, and that the church militant corresponds to the church triumphant. 4. That the teaching of the apostles was not by books, but by the power of the Spirit. And Christ himself in the temple asked the doctors, and did not read. 5. That if men were to read Scripture for themselves, disputes would soon arise. 6. That in Christ's body each member has its proper office, but if everyone may read, then the foot becomes the eye; and who would offer a book to a joint of his foot? Butler also wrote a tract ‘De Indulgentiis,’ of which Bale saw a copy which had belonged to the Minorites at Reading; four books of commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard; one book treating of various questions; and several other works which his biographers do not specify. To Reading he is said to have removed from Oxford, and there, according to Pits, he died about 1410.
[Bale's Collectanea de Scriptt. Anglis, a MS. in the Bodl. Lib., ‘Selden supra, 64,’ p. 215; Bale's Scriptt. Brit. Catalogus, Basle, 1557, p. 537; Merton Coll. MS. 68, ff. 202–4; Pits, De Angliæ Scriptoribus, Par. 1619; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. 1748; Madden's and Forshall's Pref. to Wycliffe's Bible, Oxford, 1850, i. xxxiii.; Brewer's Monumenta Franciscana, Lond. 1858, pp. 538, 561.]
BUTLER, WILLIAM (1535–1618), physician, was born at Ipswich, and educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, of which he became fellow. He graduated M.A., and was probably incorporated in that degree at Oxford in 1563. In October 1572 the university of Cambridge granted him a license to practise physic, he having then been a regent in arts for six years. He was usually styled Doctor, though he never took the degree of M.D. He acquired the most extraordinary reputation in his profession, and it is said that ‘he was the first Englishman who quickened Galenical physic with a touch of Paracelsus, trading in chemical receipts with great success.’ In October 1612 he was summoned from Cambridge to attend Henry, prince of Wales, in his last illness. Although Sir Edward Peyton has not scrupled to cite Butler's opinion that the prince was poisoned, it appears that, in common with the other physicians, he entertained no such suspicion (Secret Hist. of the Court of James I, ii. 247, 346). In November 1614 Butler attended the king at Newmarket for an injury received in hunting; and when the king was at Cambridge in May 1615 he visited Butler and stayed with him nearly an hour. Butler lived in the house of John Crane, a celebrated apothecary of Cambridge, and many anecdotes are recorded of his eccentricities and empirical mode of practice. Aubrey relates: ‘The Dr. lyeing at the Savoy in London, next the water side where was a balcony look't into the Thames, a patient came to him that was grievously tormented with an ague. The Dr. orders a boate to be in readinesse under his windowe, and discoursed with the patient (a gent.) in the balcony, when on a signall given, 2 or 3 lusty fellowes came behind the gent. and threw him a matter of 20 feete into the Thames. This surprize absolutely cured him.’
Butler died at Cambridge on 29 Jan. 1617–18, and was buried in Great St. Mary's. On the south side of the chancel of that church there is a mural monument with his bust, in the costume of the period, and a Latin inscription in which he is termed ‘Medicorum omnium quos præsens ætas vidit facile Princeps.’
Butler left his estate to his friend John Crane, and he was a benefactor to Clare Hall, to which he bequeathed many of his books and 260l. for the purchase of a gold communion cup. Thirty-five years after his death ‘his reputation was still so great, that many empyrics got credit among the vulgar by claiming relation to him as having served him and learned much from him.’ In the reign of Charles II there was in use in London ‘a sort of ale called Dr. Butler's ale.’ His portrait has been engraved by S. Pass.
