Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Butler, Charles (d.1647)
BUTLER, CHARLES (d. 1647), philologist and author of 'The Feminine Monarchie,' was born at one of the Wycombes ('Great Wycomb, I suppose,' says Wood) in Buckinghamshire. He entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1579, and afterwards became a bible-clerk at Magdalen College, where he took the degree of B.A. on 6 Feb. 168S-4, and proceeded M.A. on 28 June 1587. On leaving the university he received the mastership of the free school in Basingstoke, Hampshire, which appointment, together with the cure of a small church named Skewres, he held for seven years. Afterwards he was advanced to the poor vicarage of Laurence-Wotton (three miles from Basingstoke), where he continued to officiate for forty-eight years. He died on 29 March 1647, and was buried in the chancel of Laurence-Wotton church.
Butler is the author of 'The Feminine Monarchie, or a Treatise concerning Bees and the due ordering of Bees,' 1609, 8vo. Prefixed to the treatise are some commendatory verses by Warner, South, and H. Crosby; the preface to the reader is dated from Wotton, 11 July 1609. A second edition, with commendatory verses by Wither, and a frontispiece, appeared in 1623. The third edition (1634) is printed in phonetic spelling, under the title of 'The Feminin' Monarchi', or the Histori of Bees.' A Latin translation by Richard Richardson, of Emmanuel College, was published in 1673. The most curious part of this entertaining book is the bees' song, a stave of musical notes, arranged in triple time, to represent the humming of bees at swarming. Butler had previously written a Latin treatise on rhetoric, 'Rhetoricæ Libri Duo. Quorum Prior de Tropis & Figuris, Posterior de Voce & Gestu præcipit,' 4to, which is not known to have been published before 1629, although the dedicatory epistle to Lord Keeper Egerton is dated from Basingstoke '5 Idus Martii 1600.' In 1625 Butler published a treatise displaying considerable learning on affinity as a bar to marriage. The title of the work is ‘Συγγένεια. De Propinquitate Matrimonium impediente Regula, quæ una omnes quæstionis hujus difficultates facile expediat,’ Oxford, 4to. In 1633 appeared ‘The English Grammar, or the Institution of Letters, Syllables, and Words in the English Tongue. Whereunto is annexed an index of words like and unlike,’ Oxford, 4to; 2nd ed. 1634, Oxford, 4to. The author dwells upon the capriciousness of English orthography (‘neither our new writers agreeing with the old, nor either new nor old among themselves’), and proposes the adoption of a system whereby men should ‘write altogether according to the sound now generally received.’ Butler’s last work was ‘The Principles of Musik in Singing and Setting. With the two-fold vse thereof, Ecclesiasticall and Civil,’ London, 1636, 4to, dedicated to Prince Charles. Hawkins commends this treatise as learned and valuable.
[Wood’s Athenæ (ed. Bliss), iii. 209-10, Fasti, i. 223, 240; Hist. of Hampshire by Woodward, Willis, and Lockhart, iii. 230-2; Fuller’s Worthies; Hawkins’s History of the Music, ed. 1853, p. 574.]