Batman, Stephen

, ranked among the old English poets of the sixteenth century, was a native of Somersetshire, and born at Bruton, in that county, where he was educated. He afterwards went to Cambridge, and studied philosophy and divinity, and when in orders acquired the character of a learned and pious preacher. It is in his favour that he was long domestic chaplain to archbishop Parker, whom he assisted in the collecting of books and Mss. and informs us himself that within the space of four years, he had added six thousand seven hundred books to the archbishop’s library. This information we have in his “Doom.” Speaking of the archbishop, under the year 1575, the year he died, he adds, “with whom books remained (although the most part, according to the time, superstitious and fabulous, yet) some worthy the view and safe-keeping, gathered within four years, of divinity, astronomy, history, physic, and others of sundry arts and sciences (as I can truly avouch, having his grace’s commission, whereunto his hand is yet to be seen) six thousand seven hundred books, by my own travel, whereof choice being taken, he most graciously bestowed many on Corpus Christi college in Cambridge, &c.” In 1574, he was rector of Merstham in Surrey, and afterwards, being then D. D. chaplain to Henry lord Hunsdon, to whom he dedicated his translation of “BartholomaBus de proprietatibus rerum,” Lund. 1582, fol. The other work above-mentioned is entitled “The Doom, warning all men to judgment: wherein are contained for the most part all the strange prodigies | happened in the world, with divers secret figures of revelation, gathered in the manner of a general chronicle out of approved authors, by Stephen Batman, professor in divinity,” London, 1581, 4to. It appears to he a translation of Lycosthenes “De prodigiis et ostentis,” with additions from the English chronicles. He published also “A christall glass of Christian reformation, wherein the godly may behold the coloured abuses used in this our present time,” London, 1569, 4to, with some pieces of poetry interspersed. Mr. Ritson mentions another of his publications in the same year, but without place or printer’s name, called “The travayled Pilgrime, bringing newes from all partes of the worlde, such like scarce harde of before,” 4to. This Mr. Ritson describes as an allegorico-theological romance of the life of man, imitated from the French or Spanish, in verse of fourteen syllables. His other works, enumerated by Tanner, are, “Joyfull news out of Helvetia from Theophrastus Paracelsus, declaring the ruinate fall of the Papal Dignitie; also a treatise against Usury,” Lond. 1575, 8vo. “A preface before John Rogers, displaying of the family of Love,” 1579, 8vo. “Of the arrival of the three Graces into England, lamenting the abuses of this present age,” 'London, 4to, no date. “Golden book of the leaden gods,” Lond. 1577, 4to, mentioned by Mr. Warton as one of the first of those descriptions of the heathen gods, called a Pantheon. “Notes to Leland’s Assertio Arthuri, translated by Rich. Robinson,” Lond. no date. Batman died in 1587. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add that his works are now rarely to be met with, particularly the “Doom,” which had a great many wooden cuts of monsters, prodigies, &c. His “Christall glass” and the "Golden book are in the British Museum. ¹