Francis Babington d.1569

Francis BABINGTON d.1569

Biographical Note

Born in Leicestershire; BA Christ’s College, Cambridge 1549, fellow of St John's 1551, MA 1552. Incepted in Arts at Oxford 1554; proctor of the University 1557 and fellow of All Souls; BTh 1558; DTh 1560. Master of Balliol College 1559; Rector of Lincoln College 1560; Vice-Chancellor of Oxford 1560-1562, Lady Margaret professor of divinity 1560-1563. Babington was ordained priest in London on 5 March 1557 and held at least 4 livings. He had a reputation for scholarship and was known for his prowess in philosophical and logical disputations. He clearly had administrative skills, holding positions of increasing importance in the administration of colleges at Oxford and the university itself. In 1555 he declared himself Catholic and was prominent in enforcing Catholic orthodoxy in Oxford in Mary I’s reign. On Elizabeth I’s accession he declared himself protestant. However, he was accused of being a secret Catholic and resigned from the vice-chancellorship in 1562, as Rector of Lincoln and Lady Margaret professor in 1563 and was deprived of his multiple church livings in 1564. In 1565 he fled to continental Europe and died there in December 1569.

Books

Babington’s personal library included works of Church Fathers, medieval theologians and his contemporaries. He collected manuscripts as well as printed books. Some of his books remained at Lincoln College while others were in the Jesuit College of the Immaculate Conception (an administrative district rather that a College, comprising Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire) by the mid-17th century. Many of these are now at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire and two are in the Jesuit Archives in Mount Street, London. In Oxford there are some of his books at Lincoln College and at least one MS at St John’s College.

Sources

• L. Vinten, Babington's books, British Jesuit Archives.
• Amos, N. Scott."Babington, Francis (d. 1569?), college head." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Dijkgraaf, Hendrik, The Library of a Jesuit Community at Holbeck, Nottinghamshire (1679), Libri Pertinentes 8, Cambridge, 2003.
• St John's College, Oxford MS 78.
• Information from Lucy Vinten.