Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/443

 Robins died at Regency House, King's Road, Brighton, on 8 Feb. 1847, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery. He left to his widow and children 140,000l., besides extensive real property. He married, first, on 17 Sept. 1800, Isabella Cates, who died at Turnham Green on 19 Dec. 1828; and, secondly, on 13 Aug. 1831, Miss Marian Losack. Among other children he left three sons: George Augustus, rector of Eccleston, Cheshire; Arthur, rector of Holy Trinity, Windsor, and chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria; and Gilbert, solicitor, 11 Pancras Lane, city of London.

[Thornbury's Old and New London, ed. Walford, 1887, i. 522–4, iii. 225, v. 221; Gent. Mag. May 1847, pp. 556–7; Times, 20 March 1847, p. 6; Illustrated London News, 21 May 1842, p. 25, with portrait, 20 Feb. 1847, p. 128, with portrait; Grant's Portraits of Public Characters, 1841, pp. 261–304; Faulkner's History of Brentford, Ealing, and Chiswick, 1845, p. 323.]  ROBINS, JOHN (1500?–1558), astrologer, born in Staffordshire about 1500, was entered in 1516 at Oxford, where he studied literæ humaniores and theology, and in 1520 was elected a fellow of All Souls. He graduated M.A. and was ordained. Having taken the degree of B.D. in 1531, he was in 1532 made a canon of Christ Church by Henry VIII, to whom he was then chaplain. In December 1543 he was made canon of Windsor and chaplain to Princess Mary. He died on 25 Aug. 1558, and was buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. A marble stone with a long inscription was laid over his grave (see Hist. et Ant. Oxon. ii. 178;, Antiquities of Berkshire, 1719, iii. 167, 168).

Robins appears to have been a man of industry and polite learning. His bent was especially towards mathematics and astrology, in which ‘he became the ablest person of his time, not excepting his friend Record, whose learning was more general’ (, Athenæ Oxon. i. 261). He left several astronomical and astrological tracts in manuscript: 1. ‘De Stellis Fixis,’ Bodl. MS. Digby 143. 2. ‘De Portentosis Cometis’ (to Henry VIII), Trin. Libr. Cambr. O. 1. 11. (the preface, partly plagiarised from Cicero, is reprinted in Halliwell's ‘Rara Mathematica,’ 1839). 3. ‘De Accidentibus futuris’ (to Henry VIII), Bodl. MS. Ashmol. 186. 4. ‘Tractatus de Prognosticatione per Eclipsin.’ 5. ‘Observationes Astrologiæ,’ Brit. Mus. MS. Sloane 1743. 6. ‘Annotationes Astrologiæ,’ Brit. Mus. MS. Sloane 1773 (containing also ‘Epitome in Apotelesmata Ptolemæi’). There are extracts from 5 and 6 in Bodl. MS. 3467, Seld. Arch. B. 79, p. 149.

[Pits, De Illustr. Angl. Scriptt. (appendix), p. 880; Bale's Cent. xii. 28; Tanner's Bibliotheca Britannica; Knight's Cyclopædia of Biography; cf. also Bodl. MS. Ashmol. 1123 for Windsor ecclesiastical accounts, &c., by Robins.]  ROBINS, JOHN (fl. 1650–1652), ranter, was a man of little education. ‘As for humane learning’ (he says) ‘I never had any; my Hebrew, Greek, and Latine comes by inspiration.’ A misdirected study of the Bible turned his head. He appears to have been a small farmer, owning some land. This he sold, and, coming to London with his wife Mary (or Joan) Robins, was known in 1650 to Lodowicke Muggleton [q. v.] and John Reeve (1608–1658) [q. v.] as claiming to be something greater than a prophet. He was familiarly spoken of as ‘the ranters' god’ and ‘the shakers' god.’ His followers deified him, and it would seem that he did not reject a species of divine homage. His wife expected to become the mother of a Messiah. Robins probably viewed himself as an incarnation of the divine being; he asserted that he had appeared on earth before, as Adam, and as Melchizedek. He claimed a power of raising the dead. Robins broached a scheme for leading a host of 144,000 persons to the Holy Land; Joshua Garment was to be his Moses for this expedition; the volunteers were prepared by a diet of dry bread, raw vegetables, and water, a regimen which proved fatal to some of them. On 24 May 1651 Robins, his wife, and eight of his followers were apprehended at a meeting in Long Alley, Moorfields, and consigned to the New Bridewell at Clerkenwell, where three other disciples were sent to join them. During three days they held a sort of public reception of the ‘gentry and citizens’ who ‘resorted thither to dispute with them.’ Robins reduced his personal claim to one of inspiration, and rested his hopes of salvation on the merits of our Lord; his followers stoutly maintained his higher pretensions. Among the disputants was ‘an Oxford scholar,’ who referred to the previous fanaticism of William Hacket [q. v.], Edmund Coppinger [q. v.], and Henry Arthington, giving this last name as Arthingworth, perhaps because among the followers of Robins was a Mary Arthingworth. Robins remained in durance for more than ten months. On 5 Feb. 1652 Reeve and Muggleton, who had just received their own ‘commissions’ as prophets, visited Robins in his Clerkenwell prison, and passed sentence of eternal damnation upon him. The scene is graphically narrated by Muggleton. Robins said afterwards that he felt ‘a burning in his throat,’ and heard