Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Shirwood, Robert
SHIRWOOD, ROBERT (fl. 1520), hebraist, was born at Coventry in Warwickshire. He entered the university of Oxford, where he acquired a knowledge of logic, but was chiefly known as a profound scholar in Hebrew and Greek. No confirmation of the statement that he obtained the degree of D.D. there can be found in the register. He possessed a considerable reputation abroad, and visited several foreign universities, among others that of Louvain, where, in 1519, he filled for a month the place of the Hebrew lecturer, Robert Wakefield [q. v.], who had temporarily vacated his post. While he was abroad Shirwood wrote an exegetical work, entitled ‘Ecclesiastes Latine ad veritatem Hebraicam recognitus, cum nonnullis annotationibus Chaldaicis et quorumdam Rabbinorum sententiis,’ Antwerp, 1523, 4to, which he dedicated to John Webbe, prior of the monastery of the Benedictines in Coventry. He also published several sermons.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 58; Bale's Scriptores Britanniæ, cent. 11, p. 73; Pits, De Reb. Angl. p. 706; Dodd's Church Hist. i. 213; Andreas's Fasti Academici Lovaniensis, 1650, p. 284; Dublin Review, 1896, ii. 140.]