Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkins, Henry
HAWKINS, HENRY (1571?–1646), jesuit, born in London in 1571 or 1575, was second son of Sir Thomas Hawkins, knt., of Nash Court, Kent, by Anne, daughter and heiress of Cyriac Pettit, of Boughton-under-the-Blean, Kent. John Hawkins [q. v.] and Sir Thomas Hawkins [q. v.] were his brothers. After studying classics in the college of the English jesuits at St. Omer, he entered the English College at Rome, under the assumed name of Brooke, on 19 March 1608–9. He received minor orders in 1613, was ordained priest about the same time, and, after spending two years in the study of scholastic theology, left for Belgium and entered the Society of Jesus about 1615. A manuscript ‘status’ of the English College at Rome for 1613 says that he was the ‘son of a cavalier, lord of a castle, a man of mature age, intelligent in affairs of government, very learned in the English laws, and that he had left a wife, office, and many other commodities and expectations, to become a priest in the seminaries.’ Hawkins on coming to England was captured and imprisoned. In 1618 he was sent into perpetual exile with eleven other jesuits, but, like most of his companions, soon returned to this country, where he laboured, principally in the London district, for twenty-five years. He is named among the ‘veterani missionarii’ in the list of jesuits found among the papers seized in 1628 at the residence of the society in Clerkenwell. In his old age he withdrew to the house of the English tertian fathers at Ghent, where he died on 18 Aug. 1646.
His works are:
- A translation into English of Father John Floyd's ‘Synopsis Apostasiæ Marci Antonii de Dominis’ [q. v.], St. Omer, 1617, 8vo [see Floyd, John].
- ‘Certaine selected Epistles of St. Hierome, as also the Lives of St. Paul, the first Hermite; of Saint Hilarion, the first Monke of Syria; and of St. Malchus, by the same Saint, translated into English,’ permissu superiorum, 1630, 4to.
- ‘Fuga Sæculi; or the Holy Hatred of the World. Conteyning the Lives of 17 Holy Confessours of Christ, selected out of sundry Authors. Translated by H. H.’ (from the Italian of the jesuit father Giovanni Pietro Maffei), Paris, 1632, 4to. The preface and the arguments by the translator are in verse.
- ‘The History of St. Elizabeth, Daughter of the King of Hungary. Collected from various authors by N. A.,’ sine loco, 1632, 12mo; dedicated to Lady Jerneghan.
- ‘Partheneia Sacra. Or the Mysteriovs and Deliciovs Garden of the Sacred Parthenes; Symbolically set forth and enriched with pious devises and emblemes of devovt sovles; Contriued al to the honovr of the Incomparable Virgin Marie, Mother of God; For the pleasure and deuotion of the Parthenian Sodalitie of her Immaculate Conception, by H. A.,’ Paris (John Cousturier), 1633, 8vo, illustrated with fifty plates. Oliver mentions an edition, Rouen, 1632, 8vo. The plates are neat and the verses above mediocrity.
- ‘The Life of St. Aldegunda,’ Paris, 1636, 12mo; translated, under the initials ‘H. H.,’ from the French of the jesuit father Binet.
[De Backer's Bibl. des Écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, ii. 64; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 118; Foley's Records, iii. 491, iv. 592n., 700, vi. 253, 524, vii. 346; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Hazlitt's Bibliographical Collections and Notes, i. 205, ii. 272; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. Bohn, pp. 1, 726, 1198, 1448; More's Hist. Missionis Anglicanæ Soc. Jesu, p. 378; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 115; Southwell's Bibl. Scriptorum Soc. Jesu, p. 326.]