John Theyer

was born of gentile Parents at Cowpers-hill in the Parish of Brockworth near to, and in the County of, Glocester, began to be conversant with the Muses in Magd. Coll. an. 1613 aged 16 years or thereabouts, where continuing about three years, partly under the tuition of John Harmur, retired to an Inn of Chancery in London called New Inn, where spending as many years in obtaining knowledge in the Common Law, he receeded to his patrimony, and, as years grew on, gave himself up mostly to the study of venerable antiquity, and to the obtaining of the antient monuments thereof, (Manuscripts) in which he did so much abound, that no private Gentleman of his rank and quality did ever, I think, exceed him. He was a bookish and studious Man, a lover of learning and the adorers thereof, a zealous Royallist, and one that had suffer’d much (in the rebellion that began 1642) for the Kings and Churches cause. He hath written,

Aerio-Mastix: or, a vindication of the Apostolical and generally received government of the Church of Christ by Bishops, against the scismatical Aerians of our time. Wherein is evidently demonstrated that Bishops are jure divino, &c. Oxon. 1643. qu. Dedicated to King Ch. 1. who afterwards made use of it in his Writings to Alexander Henderson a Presbyterian Scot, who died at Edenburg, 31. Aug. 1646 of grief, as some then said, because he could not perswade the said King to sign the propositions for peace which the members of Parliament sent to him at Newcastle by their Commissioners to treat with him for that purpose. In the same year (1643) our author Theyer was adorned with the degree of Master of Arts—Ob ((c))((c)) Reg. Convoc. Un. Ox. S. p. 33. merita sua in Rempub. literariam & ecclesiam, by virtue of the Kings Letters sent to the Vicechanc. and Convocation, dat. 6. July the same year. About which time he the said Theyer being discovered to be a man of parts, was perswaded to embrace the Rom. Catholick Religion by Father Philipps a Scot, confessor to Henrietta Maria the Queen Consort. He hath also written,

A friendly debate between the Protestants and the Papists—MS. But before it was quite fitted for the Press the author died, and what became of it afterwards I know not. His death hapned at Cowpers hill, on the 25 of Aug. in sixteen hundred seventy and three,1673. and two days after was buried among his Ancestors in the Church yard at Brockworth before mention’d, particularly near to the grave of his Grandfather ... Theyer who had married the Sister of one Hart the last Prior of Langthony near Glocester. He then left behind him a Library of antient Manuscripts consisting of the number of about 800, which he himself had for the most part collected. The foundation of it was laid by his Grandfather who had them from Prior Hart, and he from the library of Langthony when it was dissolved, besides houshold stuff belonging to that Priory. Afterwards Charles Theyer (Grandson to our author John Theyer who in his last will had bequeathed them to him) did offer to sell them to the University of Oxon, but the price being too great, they were sold to Robert Scot of London Bookseller, who soon after sold them to his Majesty K. Ch. 2. to be reposed in his library at S. James, he having first, as I have been informed, cull’d them.