JOHN, the biographer, was born in 1560, at Aulton, in Hampshire, and educated at Wykeham's school, near Winchester, where he remained until he was about eighteen years of age, when he was sent to New College, Oxford, and admitted a probationer fellow. Having continued in that university not quite two years, he left the kingdom as a voluntary exile, and retired to Douay, whence he proceeded to the English college at Rheims, where he remained about a year, and then went to Rome, where he continued a member of the English college nearly seven years, at the expiration of which he was ordained priest. In 1589 he returned to Rheims, where, during two years, he taught rhetoric and the Greek language. He then quitted Rheims on account of the civil war in France, and retired to Pont-à-Mousson, in Lorraine, where he took the degrees of master of arts and bachelor in divinity. From this he travelled into Germany, and resided a year and a half at Trier, where he commenced licentiate in his faculty. He then visited several of the principal cities in Germany, and, continuing three years at Ingolstadt, in Bavaria, took the degree of doctor in divinity. Having made the tour of Italy, he returned once more to Lorraine, where he was patronised by the cardinal of that duchy, who preferred him to a canonry of Verdun; and about two years afterwards he became confessor to the Duchess of Cleves, daughter of the Duke of Lorraine. During the leisure he enjoyed in this employment, he wrote in Latin the lives of the kings, bishops, apostolical men, and writers of England. The last of these, commonly known and quoted by the title of De illustribus Angliae scriptoribus, was published after his death. The three others still remain in manuscript amongst the archives of the collegiate church of Liverdun. The Duke of Cleves having died about twelve years after Pits had been confessor to the duchess, the latter returned to Lorraine, attended by our author, who was promoted to the deanery of Liverdun, which, with a canonry and officialship, he enjoyed till the close of his life. He died in 1616, and was buried in the collegiate church. Pits was undoubtedly a scholar, and not an inelegant writer; but he is justly accused of ingratitude to Bale, from whom he borrowed his materials, without acknowledgment. He quotes Leland with great familiarity, without ever having seen his book; his errors are innumerable, and his partiality to the Catholic writers is obvious; nevertheless we are indebted to him for his account of several Catholic authors who lived abroad at the beginning of the Reformation.