Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/204

 quarrel with Archbishop Baldwin, and was employed by Urban III and the king in connection with the dispute in 1187 and 1188. In 1187 a large part of his cathedral church, built by Bishop Ralph Luffa, and consecrated in 1108, was destroyed by a fire which probably began on the roof. He used all means at his command to repair the damage. The triforium suffered little, but the clerestory had to be rebuilt; stone vaulting was substituted for the wooden roofs of the nave and aisles, the eastern limb was almost wholly rebuilt and much lengthened, the chapels on the eastern sides of the transepts were added, and pointed single-light windows took the place of the Norman windows in nave and choir. The church was dedicated in September 1199, but the rebuilding was not finished in Seffrid's lifetime. Seffrid is said also to have rebuilt the bishop's palace. In 1189 he was present at the coronation of Richard I, and at the great council at Pipewell. He strongly condemned the outrage inflicted by the chancellor on Geoffrey (d. 1212) [q. v.], archbishop of York, in 1191, and wrote to the monks of Canterbury declaring that he was ready to take part in avenging such an insult to the whole church. He was ordered by the king, then in captivity, to come to him in Germany in 1193 in company with the chancellor ( iii. 212). He was present at the new coronation of Richard on 17 April 1194, and at the coronation of John on 27 May 1199. In September 1200 he was too ill to attend the archbishop's synod at Westminster. He died on 17 March 1204. With the consent of the dean and chapter of Chichester he made statutes for the canons and vicars of the cathedral, which strengthened the independence of the chapter, and he regulated the residence of the canons and the duties of the dignitaries of the church. He founded a hospital for lepers half a mile to the east of Chichester, and another farther off in the same direction.

[Stephens's Mem. of S. Saxon See, pp. 65–9, 321; Gervase of Cant. i. 295, 385, 412, 491, Epp. Cantuar. pp. 57, 151, 167, 345, Gesta Henrici II de (B. Abbas), ii. 28, Rog. Hov. ii. 254, iii. 15, 212, 247, iv. 90, R. de Diceto, ii. 169, Ann. Winton, ii. 73, 79, and Wav. pp. 242, 252, 256, ap. Ann. Monast. (these six Rolls Ser.); Godwin, De Præsulibus, p. 503, ed. Richardson.]

 SEGAR or SEAGER, FRANCIS (fl. 1549–1563), translator and poet, whose name, variously spelt, is that of an old Devonshire family, was probably the ‘Francis Nycholson, alias Seagar,’ who was made free of the Stationers' Company on 24 Sept. 1557. He was the author of: 1. ‘A brefe Declaration of the great and innumerable Myseries and Wretchednesses used i[n] Courtes ryall, made by a Lettre whych mayster Alayn Charatre wrote to hys Brother. Newly augmented, amplified and inrytched, by Francis Segar, B.L.,’ 1549, 12mo. A fragment of this tract is in the Bodleian Library. It was probably a new edition of Caxton's translation of Alain Chartier's ‘Curial.’ Prefixed to it are five four-line stanzas ‘to the reader’ by Segar (, Bibliographia Poetica, p. 327;, Handbook, p. 96). 2. ‘Certayne Psalmes select out of the Psalter of David, and drawen into Englishe metre, wyth Notes to every Psalme in iv. partes to Synge by F. S. Printed by William Seres,’ London, 1553, 8vo. This is dedicated in Sternhold's stanza to Lord Russell, by ‘your lordeshyps humble orator, Francys Seager.’ There are nineteen psalms, followed by a poem in the same metre entitled ‘A Description of the Lyfe of Man, the Worlde and Vanities thereof’ (, under Psalms, p. 1996;, Typographical Antiquities, iv. 200). 3. ‘The Schoole of Vertue and Booke of good Nourture for Chyldren and Youth to learne theyr dutie by newly perused, corrected and augmented by the fyrst Auctour F. S. With a briefe Declaration of the Dutie of eche degree. Printed by William Seres,’ 1557, 16mo. An acrostic giving the author's name (Seager) is prefixed to this volume, which is divided into twelve chapters of doggerel rhyme. This is the earliest known edition of a once popular work. It has been reprinted by the Early English Text Society in the ‘Babees Book,’ 1868 (pp. cxiii. 333–55). It was edited by Robert Crowley [q. v.], who added ‘certain prayers and graces,’ and abridged in Robert Weste's ‘Booke of Demeanor’ (1619, reprinted in 1817 and in 1868 in the ‘Babees Book’). Wood says that Crowley's version was in his time ‘commonly sold at the stalls of ballad-singers’ (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. vi. 452).

In the 1563 edition of the ‘Myrrour for Magistrates’ Segar has a poem of forty-four seven-line stanzas, entitled ‘How Richarde Plantagenet, Duke of Glocester, murdered his brother's Children, usurping the Crowne’ (No. 24). In the ensuing prose colloquy ‘the meetre’ of the poem is, with reason, complained of, but its irregularity defended as suitable to Richard's character. The poem reappears in the editions of 1571, 1575, 1578, and 1815 (p. xxi, and ii. 381–95).

Francis was perhaps a member of the yeoman family of Seagar or Segar of Broad