Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/206

  our Sweet Harmony and Correspondence in Doctrine and Practice.' By Baillie (Letters and Journals, i. 243) it is erroneously ascribed to Bishop Lesley. It was answered by Baillie in his 'Ladensium Aὐτοκατάκρισις, the Canterbvrians self-conviction, &c., with a postscript to the personat Jesuite Lysimachus Nicanor,' Amsterdam, 1640; and a metrical answer to it, ascribed to Sir William Moore, was also published in the same year under the title 'A Covnter Bvff to Lysimachus Nicanor, calling himself a Jesuite.' Previous to the appearance of 'Lysimachus Nicanor,' Corbet had published at Dublin in 1639 'The Ungirding of the Scottish Armour, or an Answer to the Informations for Defensive Armes against the King's Majestie which were drawn up at Edinburg by the common help and industrie of the three Tables of the rigid Covenanters,' described by Baillie as 'one of the most venemous and bitter pamphlets against us all that could come from the hand of our most furious and enraged enemie.' Corbet had been recommended to Adair, archbishop of Killala, for a living in his gift, and, according to Baillie, the archbishop, playing upon his name Corbet, 'which means crow in Scotland,' declined to patronise him on the ground that 'it was an ill bird that defiles its own nest.' He, however, obtained the living of Killaban and Ballintubride in 1640, but during the rebellion of 1641 was 'hewn in pieces by two swineherds in the very arms of his poor wife.'

[Robert Baillie's Letters and Journals, i. 162, 189, 243; Ware's Hibernia, i. 652, ii. 340-1; Irving's Scottish Writers, ii. 65, 123; Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. ii. 346.]  CORBET, JOHN (1594–1662), patriot, was the eldest son of Richard Corbet, by his wife Anne, daughter of Thomas Bromley, lord chancellor of England, and grandson of Reginald Corbet [q. v.], one of the justices of the queen's bench in the reign of Elizabeth. He was baptised at Stoke-upon-Terne, Shropshire, on 20 May 1594 (parish register). He was created a baronet on 19 Sept. 1627 (Patent Roll, 3 Chas. I, pt. xxxvi. No. 2). Blakeway states that Corbet ‘was one of those five illustrious patriots, worthy of the eternal gratitude of their country, who opposed the forced loan’ in 1627. Though many of the country gentlemen were imprisoned for refusing to pay the loan, only five of them, viz. Sir John Corbet, Sir Thomas Darnel, Sir Walter Earl, Sir John Heveningham, and Sir Edmund Hampden, sued out their habeas corpus. The case was heard in Michaelmas term 1627, and judgment was given on 28 Nov., when the court unanimously refused to admit the five appellants to bail (, State Trials, 1809, iii. 1–59). They therefore remained in custody until 29 Jan. following, when they were released by the order of the king in council. The date of Corbet's baronetage seems, however, to throw considerable doubt upon Blakeway's statement, as Corbet must have refused to pay the loan prior to September 1627, and it is hardly credible that he could have been created a baronet after his refusal. Probably his identity has been confused with Sir John Corbet of Sprowston, Norfolk, whose baronetage was of earlier date (see Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1627–8, p. 327;, Life of Eliot, 1864, vol. ii. passim). In 1629 Corbet served the office of high sheriff of Shropshire. Having publicly stated at the quarter sessions for Shropshire that the muster-master wages were illegal and contrary to the petition of right, he was ‘put out of the commission of the peace, attached, and brought before the council board, and was committed to the Fleet and there kept prisoner twenty-four weeks and three days, the plague being then in London’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. 99 b). On 10 June 1635 Corbet was again imprisoned in the Fleet on an information against him in the Star-chamber (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1635, p. 238), and in October he petitioned the king for his release, stating that he had ‘remained four months a prisoner, to the great affliction of his lady and his sixteen children, the eldest not above sixteen years of age’ (ib. p. 455). In the following month he was released on giving a bond for 2,000l. for his appearance (ib. p. 507). In 1640 he was returned as one of the knights of the county of Shropshire, which he continued to represent throughout the Long parliament. The House of Commons by a resolution of 4 June 1641 declared that the imposition of 30l. per annum laid upon the subjects of the county of Shropshire for the muster-master's fee by the Earl of Bridgewater, lord-lieutenant of the county, was an illegal charge; that the attachment by which Corbet had been committed was an illegal warrant, and that he ought ‘to have reparation for his unjust and vexatious imprisonment’ (House of Commons' Journals, ii. 167).

On 30 Nov. 1641 he was chosen one of the twelve gentlemen who were deputed to present the petition and remonstrance to the king (ib. 327). In June 1645 his name appears in the list of those whom the committee appointed to consider the necessities of the members thought proper recipients of a ‘weekly allowance of four pounds per week for their present maintenance’ (ib. iv. 161). Corbet died in July 1662, in the sixty-eighth