Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/21

  [Many details as to Stradling's naval career may be found in the Calendars of State Papers, Dom., between 1631 and 1642. Other authorities are: Jefferson's History of Carlisle, pp. 51–55; Collins's Baronetage, 1720, p. 37; G. T. Clark's Limbus Patrum Morganiæ, p. 438; Phillips's Civil War in Wales.]  STRADLING, JOHN (1563–1637), scholar and poet, was the son of Francis and Elizabeth Stradling of St. George's, near Bristol, where he was born in 1563. His great-uncle, Sir Edward Stradling [q. v.], being childless, adopted John and bequeathed him his estate. Stradling was educated under Edward Green, a canon of Bristol, and at Oxford, where he matriculated from Brasenose College on 18 July 1580, and graduated B.A. from Magdalen Hall on 7 Feb. 1583–4, being then accounted ‘a miracle for his forwardness in learning and pregnancy of parts’. He studied for a time at one of the inns of court, and then travelled abroad. He was sheriff of Glamorganshire for 1607 and 1620, and was knighted on 15 May 1608, being then described as of Shropshire (, Progresses of James I, ii. 196, 422). In 1609 he succeeded to the castle and estate of St. Donat's in Glamorganshire, and was created a baronet on 22 May 1611, standing fifth on the first list of baronets. He was elected M.P. for St. Germans, Cornwall, on 15 Jan. 1624–5, for Old Sarum on 23 April 1625, his colleague there being Michael Oldisworth [q. v.], who married one of his daughters (Preface to Sermons, 1692), and for Glamorganshire on 6 Feb. 1625–6, in which year he was also a commissioner for raising a crown loan in that county. Stradling appears to have enjoyed a great reputation for learning, and ‘was courted and admired’ by Camden, who quotes him as ‘vir doctissimus’ in his ‘Britannia’ (ed. 1607, p. 498), by Sir John Harington, Thomas Leyson, and Ioan David Rhys, to all of whom he wrote epigrams (James Harrington in his Preface to Sermons). To carry out the wishes of his predecessor in the title, he built, equipped, and endowed a grammar school at Cowbridge, but the endowment seems to have subsequently lapsed until the school was refounded by Sir Leoline Jenkins [q. v.] (Arch. Cambr. 2nd ser. v. 182–6). He died in 1637.

Stradling was the author of: 1. ‘A Direction for Trauailers. Taken out of Ivstvs Lipsius, and enlarged for the behoofe of the Right Honorable Lord, the yong Earle of Bedford, being now ready to trauell,’ London, 1592, 4to; a translation of Lipsius's ‘Epistola de Peregrinatione Italica.’ 2. ‘Two Bookes of Constancie; written in Latine by Iustus Lipsius; containing, principallie, a comfortable Conference in common Calamities,’ London, 1595, 4to; a translation of Lipsius's ‘De Constantia libri duo,’ which had been published at Antwerp in 1584. Stradling also mentions Lipsius's ‘Politickes’ among those ‘bookes wherein I had done mine endeuor by translating to pleasure you,’ but this does not appear to have been published, possibly because another translation of the work by one William Jones appeared in the same year. 3. ‘De Vita et Morte contemnenda libri duo,’ Frankfort, 1597, 8vo (Bodleian Libr. Cat.; cf., Athenæ Oxon. ii. 397; , Epigrams, p. 26). 4. ‘Epigrammatum libri quatuor,’ London, 1607, 8vo. 5. ‘Beati Pacifici: a Divine Poem written to the Kings Most Excellent Maiestie … Perused by his Maiesty, and printed by Authority’ (London, 1623, 4to), with a portrait of James I engraved by R. Vaughan. 6. ‘Divine Poems: in seven severall Classes, written to his Most Excellent Maiestie, Charles [the First] …’ London, 1625, 4to. The poetry is of a didactic character; the work was described by Theophilus Field [q. v.], bishop of Llandaff, in commendatory verses, as ‘A Sustaeme Theologicall, a paraphrase upon the holy Bible’ (cf., Quodlibets … from Newfoundland, London, 1628, p. 62). A ‘Poetical Description of Glamorganshire’ by Stradling is also mentioned (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. iii. 448), but of this nothing is known.

Stradling married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Gage of Firle, Sussex. By her he had eight sons, two of whom are noticed below, and one, Sir Henry [q. v.], is noticed separately, and three daughters, of whom the eldest, Jane, married William Thomas of Wenvoe, and had a daughter Elizabeth, who became wife of Edmund Ludlow, the regicide [q. v.]

The eldest son, (1601–1644), the second baronet, born in 1601, matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, on 16 June 1615, and was elected M.P. for Glamorganshire in 1640. He was concerned in several important business undertakings; he was a shareholder in a soap-making monopoly (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1635, p. 474), and was summoned on 14 Oct. 1641 before the House of Commons to account for some of its acts (Commons' Journals, ii. 299). On 15 June 1637 he and Sir Lewis Dives and another were summoned before the Star-chamber ‘for transporting gold and silver out of the kingdom’ (Cal. State Papers, s.a.