Luke Milbourne
Encyclopedia
Luke Milbourne or Milbourn (1649–1720) was an English clergyman, known as a High Church
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...

 supporter of Henry Sacheverell
Henry Sacheverell
Henry Sacheverell was an English High Church clergyman and politician.-Early life:The son of Joshua Sacheverell, rector of St Peter's, Marlborough,...

, and also as a critic and poet.

Life

He was the son of Luke Milbourne (1622–1668), an ejected minister who was the incumbent of Wroxhall, Warwickshire
Warwickshire
Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...

, where he was born. His mother's name was Phœbe. He was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1667, and graduated B.A. in 1670. After graduating he appears to have held chaplaincies to the English merchants at Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 and Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...

.

He was afterwards at Harwich
Harwich
Harwich is a town in Essex, England and one of the Haven ports, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the northeast, Ipswich to the northwest, Colchester to the southwest and Clacton-on-Sea to the south...

, and was beneficed in the beginning of William III's reign at Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth, often known to locals as Yarmouth, is a coastal town in Norfolk, England. It is at the mouth of the River Yare, east of Norwich.It has been a seaside resort since 1760, and is the gateway from the Norfolk Broads to the sea...

. There he associated much with Rowland Davies, afterwards dean of Cork, and wrote a lampoon on the town, entitled Ostia. In 1688 he had become lecturer of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, and in 1704 he succeeded Samuel Harris as rector of St. Ethelburga's, London. He is ‘the priest of the church of England and rector of a church in the city of London’ who, in a published Letter (1713) to Roger Laurence
Roger Laurence
Roger Laurence was an English nonjuring priest and controversialist.-Life:The son of Roger Laurence, armorer, he was born 18 March 1670, and admitted on the royal mathematical foundation to Christ's Hospital in April 1679, from the ward of St Botolph, Bishopsgate, on the presentation of Sir John...

, author of ‘Lay Baptism Invalid,’ rejected the validity of lay baptism by the authority of Calvin and of French Protestant writers.

Many of his numerous printed sermons touched on the martyrdom of Charles I, and enforcing the duty of passive obedience
Passive obedience
Passive obedience is a religious and political doctrine advocating the absolute supremacy of the Crown and the treatment of any dissent as sinful and unlawful...

. After listening to one of Milbourne's high-flying sermons in January 1713, Bishop White Kennett
White Kennett
White Kennett was an English bishop and antiquarian.-Life:He was born at Dover. He was educated at Westminster School and at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where, while an undergraduate, he published several translations of Latin works, including Erasmus' In Praise of Folly.Kennett was vicar of...

 asked indignantly ‘why he did not stay in Holland?’ and ‘why he is suffered to stay in England?’

He died in London 15 April 1720.

Critic

Milbourne is mainly remembered on account of his strictures on John Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

's translation of Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

, and of the retaliation made upon him both by Dryden, and by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 on Dryden's behalf. He was coupled with Sir Richard Blackmore in Pope's Art of Criticism as the type of all that is contemptible in a critic.

Milbourne attempted an English rendering of Virgil before Dryden. According to an advertisement Milbourne had then issued The First Book of Virgil's Æneis made English. No copy may be now known. Dryden's translation appeared in 1697, and its success inspired Milbourne's attack on it. In order to demonstrate his own superiority, Milbourne supplemented criticisms by specimens of his own translation of the first and fourth Eclogues and the first Georgic. Dryden complained in the preface to the Fables (1700) that his critic's scurrility was unprovoked. One of Milbourne's avowed reasons for not sparing Dryden was that Dryden had never spared a clergyman. Dryden replied that if he had fallen foul of the priesthood he had only to ask pardon of good priests, and was afraid Milbourne's ‘part of the reparation would come to little.’ ‘I am satisfied,’ he concludes, ‘that while he and I live together I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age.’ The morals of Milbourne, who, according to Dryden, had lost his living for libelling his parishioners, were severely handled in a poem entitled The Pacificator, 1699.

Works

He contributed Latin verses to Lacrymæ Cantabrigienses, 1670, on the death of Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans.
Milbourne's other works, apart from 31 single sermons and some tracts, are:
  • ‘A Short Defence of the Order of the Church of England, by a Presbyter of the Diocese of Norwich’ (anon.), 1688.
  • ‘Mysteries in Religion vindicated, or the Filiation, Deity, and Satisfaction of our Saviour asserted against Socinians and others, with occasional reflections on several late pamphlets,’ London, 1692.
  • A metrical version of ‘The Imitation of Christ,’ entitled ‘The Christian Pattern Paraphrased,’ 1697.
  • ‘The Psalms of David in English Metre,’ 1698.
  • ‘Tom of Bedlam's answer to his Brother, Ben Hoadly,’ 1709.
  • ‘The Moderate Cabal, a Satyr in Verse,’ 1710 (anon.).
  • ‘The Two Wolves in Lamb's Skins, or Old Eli's sorrowful Lamentations over his two Sons,’ 1716.
  • ‘A Legacy to the Church of England, vindicating her Orders from the Objections of Papists and Dissenters,’ 2 vols. London, 1722, (posthumous).

Family

A son, Thomas Milbourne, was fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and died in October 1743.
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