BAKER

BAKER, SIR RICHARD, author of the Chronicle of the Kings of England, was born at Sessinghurst, in Kent, about the year 1568. After going through the usual course of academical learning at Hart Hall, in Oxford, he travelled into foreign parts; and upon his return home was created master of arts, and soon after, in 1603, received from King James I. the honour of knighthood. In 1620 he was made high sheriff of Oxfordshire; but having engaged to pay some debts of his wife's family, he was reduced to poverty, and obliged to betake himself for shelter to the Fleet prison, where he composed several books; amongst which are, Meditations and Disquisitions on the Lord's Prayer; Meditations, &c. on several of the Psalms of David; Meditations and Prayers upon the Seven Days of the Week; Cato Variegatus, or Cato's Moral Distichs varied, &c. Mr Granger observes, that his Chronicle of the Kings of England was ever more esteemed by readers of a lower class than by such as had a critical knowledge of history. In the reign of the British Solomon, the language was considered polite; and it long maintained its reputation, especially amongst country gentlemen. But the author seems to have been sometimes more studious to please than to inform, and with that view to have sacrificed even chronology itself to method. In 1658, Edward Philips, nephew to Milton, published a third edition of this work, with the addition of the reign of Charles I. It has several times been reprinted since, and by successive additions brought as far down as the reign of George I. Sir Richard also translated several works from the French and Italian; and died very poor, in the Fleet prison, on the 18th of February 1645.