Corbet Owen

son of Will. Owen of Pontsbury in Shropshire Minister, was born at Hinton in that County, an. 1646 educated in the first rudiments of Grammar in a private School in Shrewsbury under one Scofield a loyal Parson (emulated by the Town Free-school under the government of the Saints) where he profited very much, and more might he have done, had not his friends sent him into France, and thence into Flanders to be touched by the then exil’d King for the cure of the Kings Evil, of which he was once so lame that he went upon crutches. In the month of May 1658 he made his first entry into Westminster School, and in the year following, he was elected one of the Kings Scholars there, where ’twas usual with him to speak 40 or 50 smooth and elegant verses ex tempore, in little more than half an hour. In 1664 he was elected Student of Ch. Ch. and in short time was well vers’d in the most crabbed subtilities of Philosophy. After he was Bach. of Arts he applied himself to the study of Physick, in which he made so wonderful a progress, that had he lived, he would have gone beyond all of his time in that faculty. In 1670 he proceeded M. of A. and had there been an Act celebrated that year (which was put off because of the death of the Duchess of Orleance) he would have performed the exercise belonging to the Senior of that solemnity, and thereby would, as ’tis probable, have shew’d himself as excellent for Oratory, as he had the year before done for his poetry. He was the most forward person of his age in the University for his polite learning. He was enriched with a great and happy memory, a most accurate judgment, and with a clear and quick wit. He hath written,

Carmen Pindaricum in Theatrum Sheldonianum, in solennibus magnifici operis Encaeniis. Oxon. 1669 in 4. sh. in qu.

Divers poems. MS.—with translations of Poetry, particularly the Otho of Monsieur de Corneille, (often acted on the French stage) which he rendred into English vers. He died to the great reluctancy of all those who were well acquainted with the wonderful pregnancy of his parts, about the 18. day of January in sixteen hundred and seventy,1671. and was buried in the Church at Cundore in Shropshire. Soon after was a large epitaph made for, by one that intirely loved, him; but whether it was put over his grave, I know not. The beginning is this. Siste viator, & irrita naturae virtutisque molimina, vel risu vel lachrymis prosequere, &c.