PETER, D.D., an English miscellaneous writer, was born in 1600, at Burford, near Oxford. He was educated at that university, and, after graduating, lectured publicly on history and geography. Entering the church, he was appointed chaplain to Charles I., who rewarded his bigoted royalism with several valuable livings. His monarchical enthusiasm was by no means quenched when, like all the king's favourites, he found himself marked out for punishment by the parliamentarians, who stripped him of all his preferments and property. He had before this made himself a considerable name as a writer by the publication, in 1625, of his Microcosmus, or a Description of the Great World, which had enjoyed a wide circulation, and been several times reprinted. He now devoted himself to literature, and produced in all no fewer than 37 different works on history, geography, and divinity, besides poems and miscellaneous works. These, though now known only to the antiquarians, were extremely popular in the seventeenth century, especially among the royalists, whose cause he vindicated with much ability and zeal. His historical works in especial, were conceived and written in a spirit of the most bigoted partizanship. After the Restoration, Heylin was for a time utterly neglected by the party in whose service he had lost his all; and it was only a very few months before his death, in 1662, that his services were slabbily requited with the sub-deanery of Westminster. Among his principal works are a Life of Laud, a History of the Tithes, Defence of the Church of England, and a very graphic and humorous narrative of a six weeks' tour on the Continent, which repays perusal now better than almost any of his more elaborate writings.

Not long after Heylin's death, two biographies of him appeared, the first by "one Mr George Vernon of Gloucester," and the other by Dr Barnard, the son-in-law of the deceased controversialist, and an accomplished scholar. Vernon was a kind of literary pet of the Heylin family, who seem to have instigated him to a piece of literary workmanship, for which he was quite unfit. The furious quarrel that ensued between him and his learned rival, and which resulted in the complete victory of the latter, has found a place in Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature.