Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gibbon, Charles
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GIBBON, CHARLES (fl. 1589–1604), miscellaneous writer, was a member of Cambridge University, but there is no record of his having graduated. He was probably in holy orders, and appears to have resided at Bury St. Edmunds, London, and King's Lynn. He was the author of:
- ‘The Remedie of Reason: not so comfortable for matter as compendious for memorie,’ 1589, 4to.
- ‘A compendious Forme for domesticall Duties; also our Trust against Trouble,’ 1589, 4to.
- ‘Not so newe as true, being a caueat for all Christians to consider of. Wherein is truelie described the iniquities of this present time, by occasion of our confused living, And justly approved the world to be never worse by reason of our contagious lewdness,’ 1590, 4to.
- ‘A Work worth the Reading, wherein is contained fiue profitable and pithy questions, very expedient as well for parents to perceive howe to bestowe their children in mariage, & to dispose their goods at their death, as for all other Persons to receive great Profit by the rest of the matters herein expressed,’ 1591, 4to.
- ‘The Praise of a Good Name; the Reproach of an Ill Name, … with certain pithy Apothegues very profitable for this age,’ 1594, 4to. This book, which is dedicated to ‘some of the best and most ciuill sort of the inhabitants of St. Edmond's Bury,’ appears to have been written in answer to some calumny under which the author was smarting.
- ‘The Order of Equalitie, contriued and divulged as a generall Directorie for common Sessements; serving for the indifferent defraying, taxing, & rating of common Impositions and Charges, lyable to Citties, Townes, or Villages,’ &c., Cambridge, 1604, 4to. The last-named work, which is perhaps the most important, is an appeal for proportional equalisation of the incidence of taxation.
[Ames's Typogr. Antiq. (Herbert), pp. 1101, 1231, 1244–6; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Bodl. Libr. Cat.; Huth Libr. Cat.; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ii. 884; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 396.]