Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/29

 following year he commanded a company at the battle of Rowton Heath in Cheshire; on 1 Feb. 1646 he was selected by the royalist commander, Lord Byron, as one of his commissioners to negotiate the surrender of Chester, and acted in a similar capacity when Colonel Richard Bulkeley surrendered Beaumaris, 14 June following.

On the triumph of the parliamentary cause, Robinson, who was marked out for special vengeance, fled from Gwersyllt in the disguise of a labourer, first to the Isle of Man, and then into France. His estates were confiscated. His name appears in the bill for the sale of delinquents' estates (26 Sept. 1650). At the Restoration in 1660 he recovered his estates and received other marks of royal favour. He was nominated a knight of the Royal Oak for Anglesea. He was colonel of the company of foot militia or trained bands in Denbighshire, when that regiment was called out on the apprehension of a rising in July 1666 (Cal. State Papers). Having succeeded Sir Heneage Finch as member for Beaumaris at a by-election in July 1661, he retained his seat until the dissolution of the ‘pensionary’ parliament in January 1679; he is said to have been in receipt of a pension of 400l. a year (‘A Seasonable Argument for a New Parliament,’ 1677, reprinted in Parliamentary History). Robinson succeeded Sir John Owen of Clennennau in the post of vice-admiral of North Wales in 1666, and held the office till his death in March 1681. He was buried in Gresford church. He left two sons, John and William. His grandson, William Robinson, M.P. for Denbigh from 1705 to 1708, assumed the surname of Lytton on inheriting from his cousin in 1710 the estate of Knebworth in Hertfordshire, and was ancestor of Earl Lytton.

[Burke's Landed Gentry; Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss; Phillips's Civil War in Wales and the Marches; Parliamentary Returns; Williams's Parliamentary History of Wales.]  ROBINSON, JOHN (1650–1723), bishop of London, born at Cleasby, near Darlington, Yorkshire, on 7 Nov. 1650, was second surviving son of John Robinson (d. 1651) of Cleasby, by his wife Elizabeth (d. 1688), daughter of Christopher Potter of the same parish. His father appears to have been in a humble station of life; his great-grandfather is described as ‘John Robinson esquire of Crostwick, Romaldkirk, co. York.’ His elder brother, Christopher (1645–1693), emigrated to Virginia about 1670, settled on the Rapahannock river, became secretary to the colony and one of the trustees of the William and Mary College; he was father of John Robinson (d. 1749), president of Virginia, and grandfather of Sir Frederick Philipse Robinson [q. v.]

The future bishop was, according to Hearne (Reliquiæ, ii. 134), apprenticed to a trade, but his master, finding him addicted to book learning, sent him to Oxford; he accordingly matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, as a pensioner on 24 March 1670, graduated B.A. 1673, and M.A. 1684, and was fellow of Oriel College from 1675 (elected 18 Dec.) to 1686. The college in 1677 gave him leave to go abroad, which was renewed in 1678 and 1680. He was made D.D. by Tenison at Lambeth, 22 Sept. 1696 (Gent. Mag. 1864, i. 636), and at Oxford by diploma 7 Aug. 1710.

About 1680, possibly through the influence of Sir James Astrey, whose servitor he had been at Brasenose, Robinson became chaplain to the English embassy at the court of Sweden. He remained abroad till 1709, and was regarded by successive governments as an industrious and capable political agent. During the absence of the envoy, Philip, only son of Sir Philip Warwick [q. v.], he filled the posts first of resident and then of envoy extraordinary at the Swedish court (cf., Life and Times, ii. 462, 469). In October 1686 he resigned his fellowship at Oriel and gave the college a piece of plate, in the inscription upon which he is described as ‘Regiæ majestatis apud regem Sueciæ minister ordinarius.’ In 1692 he confirmed Charles XI in the English alliance and helped to defeat the French project of a ninth electorate. In 1697, in token of his approbation, William III granted him the benefice of Lastingham in Yorkshire, which he held until 1709, and the third prebend at Canterbury. As with English diplomatists of the period, his allowances were habitually in arrears, and his complaints to the treasury were numerous. In January 1700 he was instrumental in obtaining the renewal of the treaty of the Hague. Shortly afterwards he accompanied Charles XII, with whom he was in high favour, on his chivalrous journey to Narva; he also effected the junction of the fleets of England, Holland, and Sweden in the Sound, and the consequent recognition of free navigation in the North Sea. From 1702 to 1707, while still accredited to Sweden (where in 1703 he was formally nominated commissary during absence), he was also accredited to Augustus of Poland, and spent his time in Poland or Saxony. In 1707 he resumed attendance on Charles XII at Altranstädt. By favour of, and as a compliment to, the Swedish monarch, he assumed as his motto the ‘Runic’ or Norse, ‘Madr er moldur auki’ (‘As for man, his days are grass’). He 