Traheron, Bartholomew

, a learned divine at the period of the reformation, was supposed by Wood to have been born in Cornwall, or originally descended from an ancient family of his name in that county. This supposition seems to have been suggested to Wood by Fuller, who in his “Worthies” of Cornwall says, “The first syllable of his name, and what is added thereto by my author (Bale) parentum stemmatc clarus, and the sameness of his name with an ancient family in this country, are a three-fold cable to draw my belief that he was this countryman.” He was educated at Oxford, either in Exeter college, or Hart hall, where he attained some eminence in the Latin and Greek tongues. He afterwards, as was usual with scholars desirous of extensive improvement, travelled into Germany and Italy, and heard the lectures of the eminent men of that time. On his return to England he entered into holy orders, and was made keeper of the king’s library, which Leland’s researches had greatly enriched in the time of Henry VIII. King Edward VI. who gave Traheron this appointment with a salary of twenty marks, finding him otherwise a man of great merit, conferred on him the deanery of Chichester in 1551, as Wood says, but according to Le Neve, in 1553. This, on the accession of queen Mary in the same year, he lost, as well as his other preferments, and joined the other English exiles in Germany, where, at Francfort, he became their divinity-reader, particularly on the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, against the Arians, or, as Strype says, “against the wicked enterprises of the new start-up Arians in England.” While here he appears to have written all his works; 1. “Paraeresis, lib. 1.” addressed to his brother Thomas, persuading him to embrace the reformed religion. 2. “Carmina in mortem Henrici Dudlaei.” 3. “Analysis Scoparum Johannis Cochlaei.” 4. “Exposition of a part of St. John’s Gospel made in sundry readings in the English congregation against the Arians,” 1558, 8vo, 2d edition. 5. “Exposition on | the fourth chapter of St. John’s Revelations, which treateth of the providence of God, made before his countrymen in Germany,” 1557, 8vo, reprinted 1577 and 1583. 6. “An answer made by Bar. Traheron to a private Papist,” &c. 1558, 8vo. 7. “Treatise of Repentance,” &c. Wood says he also published a translation of Vigo’s “Surgery,” and Vigo’s “Little practice.” When he died is uncertain. Wood, in his first edition, says he returned after queen Mary’s death, and was restored to all he had lost, and was living in 1662; but in his second edition he omits this, and quotes Holinshed, who gives it as a report that he died abroad in the latter end of Mary’s reign. ¹