add that in another passage Wood mentions Francis Babington as renowned for his philosophical and logical disputations.
In 1559 the Queen's visitors removed Dr. Wright from the mastership of Balliol, and appointed Dr. Babington in his stead; for with him conscience never seems to have stood in the way of preferment. Nor had Dr. Babington any objection to heaping together a plurality of livings and offices. Between 1557 and 1560 he was rector of at least four parishes, Milton Keynes, Twyford, Sherrington Aldworth,and Adstock; and two or three of these he must have held together. Besides these preferments he was, in May 1560, appointed rector of Lincoln College, and was Sir John Mason's commissary or vice-chancellor in 1560, 1561, and 1562. He even held the Lady Margaret readership in divinity for 1561, although the statutes forbade its being held by the vice-chancellor. In March 1562, he appears in conjunction with 'Anthony Forster, of Cumnore, gent.' (Sir W. Scott's Tony Foster), as assisting in forcing a protestant warden upon the Roman catholic fellows of Merton College. Wood has given a graphic description of the whole scene (Annals, anno 1562). Dr. Babington was the Earl of Leicester's chaplain, and seems about this time to have been high in favour with that nobleman. Anthony à Wood tells us that he was one of Leicester's five most trusted advisers in Oxford, and was chosen to preach Amy Robsart's funeral sermon at St. Mary's, on which occasion he 'tript once or twice by recommending to his auditors the virtues of that lady so pitifully murdered instead of so pitifully slain.' His text was 'Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur' (1560) (Bartlett's Cumnor). In the same year Dr. Babington stood as the representative of the more conservative party for the deanery of Christ Church against Dr. Sampson, the great pillar of the puritanical body. Strype, in his account of this contest, describes Dr. Babington as 'a man of mean learning and of a complying temper' (Annals of Refor. i. chap. 43), and it is hardly, necessary to say that he failed in his candidature. He seems by this time to have been losing Leicester's favour, and was more than suspected of being a concealed papist. In 1563 he had to resign the rectorship of Lincoln, and two years later was forced to flee beyond seas, where he is said to have died in 1569.
[Cooper's Athen. Cantab, i. 557; Wood's Athenæ Oxonieiises, Fasti, and History and Antiquities of Oxford; Lipscombe's History of Buckingham, ii. 515, iii. 133, iv. 249, 336; Nares's Burghley, i. 55; and authorities cited above.]
BABINGTON, GERVASE (1550–1610), bishop in succession of Llandaff, Exeter, and Worcester, is described in his 'Effigies before his Works' (published posthumously in 1615) as aged fifty-nine; and assuming this to have been his age at death (in 1610), the date of his birth has been set down as 1551, though doubts are raised by Dr. Berkenhout (Kippis's Biogr. Brit. i. '413). From the 'Reg. Bancroft' (as cited in Le Neve's Fasti, by Hardy, iii. 66) we learn that his age at death was sixty, and thus 1549 or 1550 was the date of his birth. Fuller (in his Abel Redivivus, 1651, and Church History, 1655) states that he was of Nottinghamshire, while Izacke ('Catal. of Bishops of Exeter, in Antiq. of Exeter), and after him Prince (Worthies of Devon) claim him for Devonshire. Sir William Musgrave's ' MS. Memoranda ' (Kippis, as before) confirm Fuller, and connect him with the ancient family of the Babingtons of Nottinghamshire [see Babington, Anthony]. Of his early education nothing has been transmitted. He was first sent to Cambridge University, being entered at Trinity College, of which he became fellow (Preface to his Questions and Answers to the Ten Commandments). As was not infrequent, he passed to Oxford University, where, on 15 July 1578, he was incorporated M.A. (Wood's Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 211). He returned to Cambridge, and became known as a 'hard student' of theology. In the dedicatory epistle to his collected works (published in 1615), addressed to the brothers William earl of Pembroke and Philip earl of Montgomery, it is told how their father had received Babington at his house as tutor to the family, having been 'sent thither by the ancients and heads of the said university.' And mention is made of the intimate relations in which he stood to their mother,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
He was credited with having assisted her in her versification of the Psalms, but on shadowy grounds: 'For it was more than a woman's skill to express the sense so rightly as she hath done in her verse, and more than she could learn from the English and Latin translations' (Kippis, as before, i. 412). Ballard gravely controverts the allegation, which originated with Sir John Harington (Brief View, 1653, and Ballard's Memoirs of British Ladies).
By his patron's influence he was appointed treasurer of Llandaff, collated 28 Jan. 1589–90 (Le Neve's Fasti, ii. 262). He had previously, in 1588, obtained the prebendary of Wellington in Hereford Cathedral (ibid.
