Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/67

 (13 Dec. 1643). Strode was active against Archbishop Laud, and on 28 Nov. 1644 was employed by the commons to press the lords to agree to the ordinance for the archbishop's execution. He is said to have threatened the peers that the mob of the city would force them to pass it if they delayed (, Works, v. 414, 427). ‘Mercurius Aulicus,’ commenting on the incident, terms Strode ‘he that makes all the bloody motions’ (, p. 16). On 31 Jan. 1645 he was added to the assembly of divines (Commons' Journals, iv. 38).

Strode died of a fever at Tottenham early in September 1645. On 10 Sept. the house ordered that he should have a public funeral and be buried in Westminster Abbey (ib. iv. 268). Whitelocke, who attended the funeral, describes him as a constant servant to the parliament, just and courteous (Memorials, i. 513, ed. 1853). Gaspar Hickes, who preached the funeral sermon, dwells on the disinterestedness of Strode, states that he spent or lost all he had in the public service, and asserts that his speeches were characterised by a ‘solid vehemence and a piercing acuteness’ (The Life and Death of David, a sermon preached at the funeral of William Strode, &c., 1645, 4to). At the Restoration his remains were disinterred by a warrant dated 9 Sept. 1661 (, Westminster Abbey Registers, p. 522).

The identity of the Strode who was imprisoned in 1629 with the Strode who was impeached in 1642 has been denied (, Arrest of the Five Members, p. 198; Grand Remonstrance, p. 175; Life of Sir John Eliot, ii. 445). It is satisfactorily established by Mr. Sanford (Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion, p. 397) and by Mr. Gardiner (History of England, ix. 223). Strode is also sometimes confused with William Strode (1589?–1666) of Barrington, near Ilchester, who distinguished himself by his opposition to the king's commission of array in Somerset, was one of the parliamentary deputy-lieutenants of that county in 1642, and became a colonel in the parliament's service. In 1646 he was returned to the Long parliament for Ilchester, and, being a strong presbyterian, was expelled from the house by ‘Pride's purge’ in 1648. In 1661 he was imprisoned and obliged to make a humble submission for disobeying the orders of the king's deputy-lieutenants in Somerset. He died in 1666, aged 77. His portrait, by William Dobson, which was in 1866 exhibited at South Kensington (No. 597) as that of the other William Strode, was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in December 1897.

[An Historic Doubt solved: William Strode one of the Five Members, William Strode colonel in the Parliament Army. By Emmanuel Green, Taunton, 1885, reprinted from the Proceedings of the Somerset Archæological Society for 1884; other authorities mentioned in the article.] 

STRODE, WILLIAM (1602–1645), poet and dramatist, born, according to the entry in the Oxford matriculation register, in 1602, was only son of Philip Strode, who lived near Plympton, Devonshire, by his wife, Wilmot Hanton. Sir Richard Strode of Newnham, Devonshire, seems to have been his uncle. He gained a king's scholarship at Westminster, and was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1617, but he did not matriculate in the university till 1 June 1621, when he was stated to be nineteen years old. He graduated B.A. on 6 Dec. 1621, M.A. on 17 June 1624, and B.D. on 10 Dec. 1631. Taking holy orders, he gained a reputation as ‘a most florid preacher,’ and became chaplain to Richard Corbet [q. v.], bishop of Oxford. Like the bishop, he amused his leisure by writing facile verse. In 1629 he was appointed public orator in the university, and served as proctor during the same year. In 1633 he was instituted to the rectory of East Bradenham, Norfolk, but apparently continued to reside in Oxford. When Charles I and Queen Henrietta visited the university in 1636, Strode welcomed them at the gate of Christ Church with a Latin oration, and on 29 Aug. 1636 a tragi-comedy by him, called ‘The Floating Island,’ was acted by the students of his college in the royal presence. The songs were set to music by Henry Lawes. The play was reported to be too full of morality to please the court, but the king commended it, and preferment followed. In 1638 Strode was made a canon of Christ Church, and vicar of Blackbourton, Oxfordshire, and he proceeded to the degree of D.D. (6 July 1638). From 1639 to 1642 he was vicar of Badby, Northamptonshire. He died at Christ Church on 11 March 1644–1645, and was buried in the divinity chapel of Christ Church Cathedral, but no memorial marked his grave.

Wood describes Strode as ‘a person of great parts, a pithy ostentatious preacher, an exquisite orator, and an eminent poet.’ He is referred to as ‘this renowned wit’ in an advertisement of his play in Phillips's ‘World of Words,’ 1658. Three sermons by him were published in his last years. His ‘Floating Island’ was first printed in 1655, with a dedication addressed by the writer to Sir John Hele. But his fame, like that of his Oxford friends, Bishop Corbet and Jas-