Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/400

 vester at Marston, Bedfordshire (Visitations of Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Essex, Harleian Soc. passim).

(d. 1582) was educated at Cambridge, but did not graduate, and about 1540 became surveyor-general of the king's woods south of the Trent. In 1554 he sat in parliament for Launceston. He died in 1582, and was buried at Upminster, Essex. Two works by him on the scarcity of provisions, written in 1560 and 1562, are extant in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 370 (, Cat. MSS.;, Essex, i. 173; , Athenæ, i. 461). His son John (d. 1606) was also surveyor of woods and forests (see many letters by him on forestry in Lansdowne MSS.)

Richard is said to have been educated at Benet or Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, but to have migrated, on Wolsey's visitation, to Cardinal College, Oxford, where his career is always confused with that of John Taverner [q. v.], perhaps a distant relative. Richard graduated B.A. at Oxford on 21 June 1527 (Oxford Univ. Reg. i. 147). He then returned to Cambridge, entering Gonville Hall, and being incorporated B.A. in 1529. In the following year he commenced M.A.; he made a living by teaching at Cambridge, but was induced by friends to leave it and became a student abroad (Taverner to Cromwell in Letters and Papers, v. 1762). The friend who supported him, perhaps Wolsey, died, and Taverner returned to England before 1532 in a destitute state. In that year he appealed for help to Cromwell, to whom he was unknown, not daring, as he said, to ask for the king's liberality without first communicating with Cromwell (ib.) Cromwell induced the Duke of Norfolk to promise him a small pension, and in 1533 Taverner was described as ‘last year master of Greek in Cambridge, and now Cromwell's client’ (ib. v. 1763, vi. 751). He also entered as a student at the Inner Temple, and, probably with a view to Cromwell's service, devoted himself to a study of law. In 1536 Cromwell secured his appointment as clerk of the privy seal, and in August 1537 he was enabled to marry (ib. xii., 9 Aug. 1537).

Meanwhile Taverner, under Cromwell's direction, was actively engaged in producing works designed to encourage the reformation in England. His first book was ‘The Confession of the fayth of the Germaynes exhibited to the most victorious Emperour Charles the V in the council or assemble holden at Augusta [Augsburg] the yere of our Lord 1530,’ London, 1536, 8vo, with dedication to Cromwell. Two years later followed ‘The Garden of Wysedome conteyning pleasaunt floures, that is to saye, propre and quicke sayinges of Princes, Philosophers, and other sortes of men. Drawen forth of good authours by Rycharde Tauerner.’ No copy of the first edition, which was issued probably in 1538, is known to be extant, but a second edition, ‘newly recognised and augmented,’ is bound up with ‘The Second booke of the Garden of Wysedome …’ London, 1539. In that year appeared Taverner's English version of the Bible. It was entitled ‘The most Sacred Byble which is the Holy Scripture conteyning the olde and new Testament translated into English and newly recognised with great diligence after moost faythful exemplars by Rycharde Taverner,’ London, 1539, fol. John Byddell for Thomas Barthlet (sic). Thirteen extant copies of this edition are enumerated by Cotton (Editions of the English Bible, 1852, pp. 15–16; one was sold by Messrs. Sotheby on 20 Aug. 1857 for 36l., see Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. iv. 179), and two quarto editions are said to have been issued in the same year, one by Byddell and the other by Nicolson; a copy of one edition is mentioned by Dibdin, and a copy of the other by Lewis, but neither is now known to be extant (, p. 16; cf., Annals of the English Bible, 1845, ii. 80–2). Taverner's Bible was really a revised edition of Matthew's, in which the latter's marginal notes were largely incorporated, with others added by Taverner himself. In the same year Taverner issued two editions of the New Testament, both printed by T. Petit—one in duodecimo, of which the Duke of Sussex and Herbert possessed copies, and the other in quarto, copies of which are in the Bodleian and St. Paul's Cathedral libraries.

In 1540 Taverner brought out a commentary on the epistles and gospels for the year, in two parts, the first extending from Advent to Easter, and the second from Easter to Advent. Copies of both are in the British Museum Library. The title-page of the first part is lost, and is supplied from the second, which runs: ‘The Epistles and Gospelles with a brief Postil upon the same from after Easter tyll Advent.’ Both parts were edited by Dr. Edward Cardwell [q. v.] in 1841. They were written with Henry VIII's authority, and the ‘sacraments of the church be here not heretically contemned, but catholykly avaunced;’ and ‘anabaptists, sacramentaries, and other heretics’ are denounced. Nevertheless the book contains ‘many exhortations of great force, arguments that do full justice to their subjects, and some discourses which were adopted at a later period by the church almost without the change of a single senti-