Still, John

, bishop of Bath and Wells, was born in 1543, and was the son of William Still, of Grantham in Lincolnshire. He was admitted at Christ’s college, Cambridge, where he took the degree of M. A. In 1570 he was Margaret professor at Cambridge; in 1571 became rector of Hadleigh, in the county of Suffolk, and archdeacon of Sudbury, and in 1573 was collated to the vicarage of Eastmarham, in Yorkshire. He was also elected master of St. John’s in 1574, and of Trinity college in 1577. In 1588 he was chosen prolocutor of the convocation, by the recommendation of dean Nowell, and preached the Latin sermon. Two years after the death of bishop Godwin, he was appointed to the vacant see of Bath and Wells, in | which he continued till his decease, which happened Feb. 26, 1607. Sir John Harrington describes him as a man “to whom he never came, but he grew more religious from whom he never went, but he parted better instructed.” Archbishop Parker had a high opinion of him, and not only gave him a prebend of Westminster, but recommended him very strongly to be appointed dean of Norwich, in which, however, he did not succeed. He had been one of his grace’s chaplains. The bishopric of Bath and Wells having been in his time enriched by some lead mines in Mendip hills, he is said to have left a considerable fortune to his family, and endowed an alms-house in the city of Wells.

The historians of the drama are of opinion, that in his younger days he was the author of an old play called “Gammer Gurtun’s Needle,” 1575, 4to. From the books of the stationers’ company, it mi^ht seem as though it had been composed some years before publication. It was republished among Dodsley’s Old Plays, and is frequently referred to by the commentators on Shakspeare. ¹