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Babington secured the appointment of an assistant, and upon which he almost always spent more than the amount provided by the university. Essentially a field naturalist, he visited almost every part of the British Isles in his search for plants, and always preferred to share his pleasure with others, his most frequent companion from 1845 to 1885 being William Williamson Newbould [q. v.]

Babington had always had a strong interest in evangelical mission work, and after his marriage at Walcot, near Bath, on 3 April 1866, to Anna Maria, daughter of John Walker of the Madras civil service, this interest was intensified. The Church Missionary Society, the London City Mission, the Irish Church Missions, the Uganda, Zenana, and China Missions, the rescue work of Dr. Barnardo, and the protestant propagandism in Spain and Italy received their heartiest support. Jani Alii of Corpus Christi College, the Mohammedan missionary, looked upon the Babingtons' house as his home. In 1871 Babington practically founded a cottage home for orphan girls at Cambridge. In 1874 he published the ‘History of the Infirmary and Chapel of the Hospital and College of St. John the Evangelist at Cambridge,’ while the successive editions of the ‘Manual,’ numerous papers, and his journal showed that his interest in botany, and especially in brambles, continued unabated until the end. From 1886 to 1891 Babington annually visited Braemar. He died at Cambridge on 22 July 1895, and was buried in Cherry Hinton churchyard.

Babington was at his death the oldest resident member of the university, and the oldest fellow of the Linnean Society. He had been elected a fellow of the Geological Society in 1835, of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh in 1836, of the Society of Antiquaries in 1859, of the Royal Society in 1851, and of St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1882. The name Babingtonia was given to a genus of Restiaceæ by Lindley in 1842; but this is now merged in Linné's genus Baeckea. Species of Atriplex and Rubus, and a variety of Allium, however, bear the name Babingtonii. His portrait, by William Vizard, is in the hall of his college, and another is reproduced from a pencil sketch by Mrs. Hoare, taken in 1826, in the ‘Memorials.’ His herbarium of nearly fifty thousand sheets and sixteen hundred volumes of botanical works were bequeathed to the university. The Royal Society's Catalogue (i. 136–9, vii. 62, ix. 91) enumerates 132 papers by Babington published prior to 1882, and others are enumerated in the ‘Memorials.’

Babington's separate publications have already been mentioned in chronological order. The successive editions of his ‘Manual of British Botany’ were published in 1843, 1847, 1851, 1856, 1862, 1867, 1874, and 1881. Each was in one volume, 12mo, and consisted of a thousand copies. A ninth edition, under the editorship of Messrs. Henry and James Groves, is now in preparation.

 BABINGTON, CHURCHILL (1821–1889), scholar, only son of Matthew Drake Babington, rector of Thringstone, Leicestershire, was born at Roecliffe in that county on 11 March 1821. He was connected with the Macaulay family, and slightly, on his mother's side, with that of the poet Churchill. Charles Cardale Babington [q. v. Suppl.] was his cousin. He was entered at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1839, and graduated B.A. in 1843, taking the seventh place in the classical tripos, and a senior optime's in mathematics. He was elected a fellow and ordained in 1846, in which year he gained the Hulsean essay, writing on ‘Christianity in relation to the Abolition of Slavery.’ Some four years previously he had vindicated his youthful love of natural history in a contribution to Potter's ‘History and Antiquities of Charnwood Forest’ (1842, 4to). He graduated M.A. in 1846, and S.T.B. in 1853, proceeded D.D. in 1879, and was elected an honorary fellow of St. John's, Cambridge, in 1880. In 1849 was published at Cambridge his able defence of the English clergy and gentry of the seventeenth century against Macaulay's aspersions in the famous third chapter of the ‘History of England’ (Mr. Macaulay's Character of the Clergy… considered). Gladstone, in reviewing Macaulay's ‘History,’ was strongly impressed with Babington's essays, and considered that he had convicted Macaulay at least of partiality. In 1850 he was entrusted by the university with the task of editing the recently discovered fragments of ‘The Orations of Hyperides against Demosthenes, and for Lycophron and for Euxenippus’ from the papyri found at Thebes in Upper Egypt, and his edition was issued in two volumes (1850 and 1853). In 1855 he brought out an edition of ‘The Benefits of Christ's Death,’ supposed to be by the Italian reformer, Aonio Paleario. In 1860 he edited for the Rolls Series Pecock's ‘Repressor,’ and in 1865, for the same series, the two first volumes of Higden's ‘Polychronicon.’ In 1865 he was elected Disney professor of archæology at Cambridge, and published his introductory lecture. His contributions to the ‘