September 1659, lodged him for a time at her house.
A fearless and powerful preacher, she attended at St. John the Evangelist's church in the same year and questioned the priest upon his doctrine. He hurried away, leaving her to be jostled and abused. Gough says she was three times in Newgate in 1664, but these imprisonments are not recorded in Besse's ‘Sufferings.’ She early took a prominent part among the quaker women, being specially trusted with the care of the sick, poor, and prisoners. She visited the prisons at Ipswich and elsewhere. In 1671, a year before the representative yearly meeting, the ‘six weeks' meeting’ was established as a court of appeal. It was composed of ‘ancient Friends’—i.e. in experience and quaker standing, not age—and Rebecca Travers was one of its first members. It still exists, as does also the ‘box meeting’ for the relief of poor Friends, which was first started at her house. Rebecca Travers died on 15 June 1688, aged 79. A son, Matthew, and at least one daughter survived. She was author of ten small works, including a volume of religious verse, and prefaces to two of Naylor's books; also (this is not given in Smith's ‘Catalogue’) of ‘The Work of God in a Dying Maid,’ London, 1677, 12mo (two editions); reprinted Dublin, 1796, 12mo; London, 1854, 24mo. It is the account of the conversion to quakerism and subsequent death of Susan Whitrow, a modish young lady of fifteen.
[Neal's Hist. of Puritans, v. 277; Gough's Hist. of Quakers, iii. 219–23; Barclay's Letters of Early Friends, p. 129; Sewel's Hist. of the Rise, ii. 352; Smith's Cat. ii. 820; Whitehead's Christian Progress, pp. 292, 294; Beck and Ball's London Friends' Meetings, pp. 92, 129, 351; Besse's Sufferings, i. 484; Whitehead's Impartial Relation of Naylor, p. xxi; Registers at Devonshire House, E.C.; Swarthmore MSS., where are three original letters.]
TRAVERS, WALTER (1548?–1635), puritan divine, eldest son of Walter Travers, a goldsmith, of Brydelsmith Gate, Nottingham, by his wife Anne, was born at Nottingham about 1548. The father, a strong puritan, divided his lands among his three sons, Walter, John, and Humphrey, and his only daughter, Ann (see copy of his will, proved 18 Jan. 1575 at P. C. Nottingham, in Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. v. 27).
Travers matriculated as a student at Christ's College, Cambridge, on 11 July 1560, graduated B.A. 1565, M.A. 1569, was elected a junior fellow of Trinity on 8 Sept. 1567, and senior fellow 25 March 1569 (Mullinger, Hist. of the Univ. Cambr. p. 631). Whitgift was then master, and professed afterwards that had he not left Cambridge he would have expelled Travers for nonconformity (Strype, Life, i. 343). Travers went to Geneva, formed a lifelong friendship with Beza, then rector of the university, and became strengthened in his desire for reform within the church of England. He there wrote the famous ‘Ecclesiasticæ Disciplinæ et Anglicanæ Ecclesiæ ab illa Aberrationis plena è verbo Dei & dilucida explicatio,’ printed anonymously at La Rochelle, 1574, 8vo. This was at once ascribed to Travers's authorship. An English translation by Thomas Cartwright [q. v.], was entitled ‘A full and plaine declaration of Ecclesiasticall Discipline owt off the word off God, and off the declininge off the churche off England from the same, 1574’ [probably 1574–5], 4to; the Latin preface by Cartwright (cf. p. 7) is dated 2 Feb. In this work Travers discusses the proper calling, conduct, knowledge, apparel, and maintenance of a minister, the offices of doctors, bishops, pastors, and elders, and the functions of the consistory. He severely criticised the universities, calling them ‘the haunts of drones … monasteries whose inmates yawn and snore, rather than colleges of students.’
Nevertheless, on his return to England, Travers proceeded B.D. at Cambridge, and was incorporated D.D. at Oxford 11 July 1576. He declined to subscribe, and was unable to obtain a license to preach (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. Addenda, 1566–79, p. 528). Early in 1578, when Cartwright was settled in the Low Countries, it was suggested by Henry Killigrew to William Davison [q. v.], the English ambassador there, that Travers should found an English service for the merchants at Antwerp (ib. pp. 532, 534, 540, 542, 544, 549). After taking leave of his mother at Nottingham, he went over about April, and on 14 May was ordained by Cartwright, Villiers, and others at Antwerp, preaching his ordination sermon the same day to a large congregation (Fuller, Church Hist. bk. ix. p. 214; Neal, Hist. of Puritans, i. 289).
In a year or two Travers was back in England, perhaps as pastor at Ringwood, Hampshire (Foster), and acting as domestic chaplain to Lord-treasurer Burghley, and tutor to his son Robert Cecil (afterwards Earl of Salisbury). In 1581, recommended by Burghley and by two letters from Bishop Aylmer of London, he was appointed afternoon lecturer at the Temple, Richard Alvey being master. At the Lambeth conference of distinguished laymen and clergy in September 1584 Travers was the chief advocate
