Hanmer, Meredith

, an English divine of a very mixed character, was son to Thomas Hanmer of Porkington, in Shropshire, where he was born in 1543, though Fuller says he was born in Flintshire. He became chaplain of Corpus Christi college, Oxford, where he took a degree in arts in April 1567. He afterwards was presented to the living of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, during his holding of which his conduct was such as to bring great odium on him. Out of avarice he tore away the brass plates from the gravestones and monuments, and sold them; and he also appears by Fleetwood’s Diary to have paid very little regard to his oath in a court of justice. In 1581 or 1582, betook his degrees in divinity, and in Nov. 4th, 1583, was presented to the vicarage of Islington, which he resigned in 1590. Two or three years afterwards he resigned Shoreditch, went to Ireland, and at length became treasurer to the church of the holy Trinity, in Dublin, which he kept until his death in 1604. Weever says he committed suicide; and there is still a tradition to this effect among the | inhabitants of Shoreditch parish. Whatever his errors, he was esteemed an exact disputant, and a good preacher; an excellent Greek scholar, and well versed in ecclesiastical and civil history. Besides some tracts against the Jesuits, he published “A Chronography,” &c. Lond. 1585, folio, which Harris says was added to his translation of “The Ancient Ecclesiastical Histories of the first 600 years after Christ, originally written by Eusebius, Socrates, and Evagrius,” 1576, folio, reprinted 1585. With this were printed the lives of the prophets and apostles, &c. by Dorotheus, bishop of Tyre; the Ephemeris of the Saints of Ireland; and “The Chronicle of Ireland, in two parts,” the third part of which was published in 1633, at Dublin, fol. He published also, “A Sermon on the Baptising of a Turk,” preached in the collegiate church of St. Katherine, 1586, 8vo. ¹