Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Coles, John
COLES or COLE, JOHN (fl. 1650), translator, son of John Coles, a clergyman, was born at Adderbury, Oxfordshire, and having been educated at Winchester became a probationer of New College, Oxford, in 1643, being then about nineteen or more, and taught the grammar school held there in the cloister, but was ejected by the visitors before he took a degree. After this he lived at Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, where he married, ' but not to his content,' and took pupils. He translated the seventh part of that endless romance ' Cleopatre,' by Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède, which he dedicated to Alicia, 'wife of his honoured friend William Lea of Hadlow,' and his translation, published, along with other parts, in folio, in 1663, contains four sets of verses in praise of his work. The whole book is generally known as Robert Loveday's 'Hymen's Præludia, or Love's Masterpiece, being . . . that so much admired romance Cleopatra,' for Loveday translated some of the earlier parts.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 540; Hymen's Præludia, preface to parts vii. and viii.]