Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/52

 and the epistle dedicatory to the English translation of Father Louis Le Comte's ‘Memoirs and Observations made in … China’ (London, 8vo, 1697). Harris printed a rejoinder to Robinson.

[Foster's Yorkshire Pedigrees; Pulteney's Sketches of the Progress of Botany (1790), ii. 118–20; Life of Ray in Select Remains (1760); Philosophical Letters (1718); Munk's Coll. of Phys. (1878), vol. i.] 

ROBINSON, THOMAS (fl. 1520-1561), dean of Durham. [See .]

ROBINSON, THOMAS (fl. 1588–1603), lutenist and composer, born in England, seems at an early age to have practised his profession at the court of Denmark. He ‘was thought, in Denmark at Elsinore,’ he says, ‘the fittest to instruct’ the Princess Anne, the king of Denmark's daughter, afterwards queen of England (Dedication to James I of Schoole of Musicke). Although the frequent visits of English musicians to the court of Christian IV were recorded at the time, and the records have been published by Dr. Hammerich, no notice of Robinson's sojourn in Denmark has been discovered.

In 1603 Robinson published ‘The Schoole of Musicke, wherein is taught the perfect method of true fingering of the Lute, Pandora, Orpharion, and Viol de Gamba’ (printed by Thomas Este, London). The preface has an allusion to a former work by Robinson, which is not known to be extant. Robinson describes the lute as the ‘best-beloved instrument,’ and readers are encouraged to teach themselves to play at sight any lesson ‘if it be not too trickified.’ The instructions are written in the form of a dialogue. Hawkins observed that this book, in which the method of Adrian le Roy was generally followed, ‘tended to explain a practice which the masters of the lute have ever shown an unwillingness to divulge’ (History, 2nd ed. p. 567). Rules for singing are not forgotten, and lessons for viol da gamba as well as lute are set down in tablature. Some of the music was old, but other specimens, including almains, galliards, gigues, toys, and Robinson's Riddle, were ‘new out of the fat.’

Another (fl. 1622), pamphleteer, seems to have been a native of King's Lynn, and to have been sent to Cambridge at the expense of Thomas Gurlin, a well-to-do citizen of Lynn; but an academic career proved distasteful, and he took to the sea. Landing at Lisbon on one of his voyages, he fell in with Father Seth alias Joseph Foster, who was in charge of the English nunnery there. The nunnery was descended from the Brigittine convent, which was located at the time of the English Reformation at Sion House, Isleworth. All the inmates at Lisbon were Englishwomen. According to his own account, Robinson was persuaded by Father Seth to enter the convent in the capacity of secretary and mass priest. He spent two years there. Returning to London, he recorded the immoral practices which he affirms he had witnessed in ‘The Anatomy of the English Nunnery at Lisbon in Portugall described and laid open by one that was some time a yonger brother of the covent,’ London (by George Purslowe), 1622. The dedication was addressed to Thomas Gurlin, then mayor of King's Lynn. A new edition, dated 1623, has an engraved title-page; one of the compartments supplies in miniature a full-length portrait of Robinson. The writer exhibits a strong protestant bias, and his evidence cannot be accepted quite literally. But his pamphlet was well received by English protestants. Robinson's version of some of his worst charges against the nuns was introduced in 1625 by the dramatist Thomas Middleton into his ‘Game at Chess’ (, Works, ed. Bullen, vii. 101, 130).

[Authorities cited.] 

ROBINSON, THOMAS (d. 1719), writer on natural history, was appointed to the rectory of Ousby, Cumberland, in 1672. After service on Sundays he presided at a kind of club at the village alehouse, where each member spent a sum not exceeding one penny; he was also a warm encourager of village sports, especially football. His leisure he devoted to collecting facts about the mining, minerals, and natural history of the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland, which he put before the world in a quaint ‘Anatomy of the Earth,’ London, 1694, 4to. This was followed by ‘An Essay towards a Natural History of Westmoreland and Cumberland, to which is annexed a Vindication of the Philosophical and Theological Paraphrase of the Mosaick System of the Creation,’ 2 pts. London, 1709, 8vo; and ‘New Observations on the Natural History of this World, of Matter, and this World of Life… To which is added Some Thoughts concerning Paradise, the Conflagration of the World, and a treatise of Meteorology,’ London, 1698, 8vo (the same, with a different title-page, London, 1699, 8vo). Robinson died rector of Ousby in 1719. He was married, and had eight children.

[Hutchinson's Hist. of Cumberland, i. 224–5; Nicolson and Burn's Hist. of Westmoreland and Cumberland; Jefferson's Hist. of Leath Ward, p. 257; Brit. Mus. Cat.] 