Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lupton, Donald
LUPTON, DONALD (d. 1676), miscellaneous writer, served during the early part of his life as chaplain to the English forces in the Low Countries and Germany. By 1632 he had settled in London, where he subsisted as a hack author. Though he paid assiduous court to all parties in church and state, he failed to obtain preferment until 27 March 1663, when he was appointed vicar of Sunbury, Middlesex (Newcourt, Repertorium, i. 744). He died in April 1676.
His writings are: 1. ‘London and the Covntrey carbonadoed and quartred into seuerall characters,’ 12mo, London, 1632, an amusing trifle written in ten days. It is reprinted in vol. ix. of the ‘Harleian Miscellany’ (ed. Park), in Halliwell-Phillipps's ‘Books of Characters,’ and in the second series of the Aungervyle Society's reprints (1883). 2. ‘Obiectorvm Redvctio, or Daily Imployment for the Soule. In occasionall Meditations upon severall subjects,’ 8vo, London, 1634, written in imitation of Bishop Hall's ‘Occasional Meditations.’ 3. ‘Emblems of Rarieties, or Choyce Observations out of worthy Histories of many remarkable Passages and renowned Actions of divers Princes and severall Nations,’ 12mo, London, 1636. 4. ‘The History of the moderne Protestant Divines … faithfully translated out of [the] Latine [of J. Verheiden and H. Holland],’ 8vo, London, 1637, besides lives of some twenty-two of the chief foreign reformers, or, as he calls them, ‘out-landish writers;’ this contains lives of English divines from Wiclif to Whitgift, together with ‘effigies or icons’ of the majority of them, excellently engraved and ‘taken to the life, some by Albertus Durerus, and the others by that Famous Henry Hondius’ (Preface). 5. ‘The Glory of their Times, or the Liues of ye Primitiue Fathers,’ 4to, London, 1640. 6. ‘A Warre-like Treatise of the Pike, or some experimentall Resolves for lessening the number and disabling the use of the Pike in Warre,’ 12mo, London, 1642. 7. ‘The two main Questions resolved: How (1) the Ministers shall be maintained: (2) the Impropriators shall be satisfied, if Tythes be put down,’ 8vo, London, 1652. 8. ‘The Tythe-takers Cart overthrown, or the Downfall of Tythes: proved that they are not to be payd now, either to the appropriate or impropriate Parsons or Persons,’ 8vo, London, 1652. 9. ‘The Freedom of Preaching, or Spiritual Gifts defended: proving that all men endowed with gifts and abilities may teach and preach the Word of God,’ 8vo, London, 1652. 10. ‘The Quacking Mountebanck, or the Jesuite turn'd Quaker’ [anon.], 4to, London, 1655. 11. ‘Flanders, or an exact … Description of … Flanders … as also a distinct Relation of some Battels fought, and Towns won, unto the now victorious proceedings of the English and French Armies therein,’ 4to, London, 1658.
What is supposed to be a portrait of Lupton appears on the title-page of his ‘History of the moderne Protestant Divines.’
[Lupton's Works; Cat. of Early English Books, 1828; Churton's Nowell, pp. 37, 244; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 2nd edit. ii. 181.]