Born at Sissinghurst, in Kent, about 1568: died at London, in the Fleet Prison, Feb. 18, 1645. An English writer, author of “Chronicle of the Kings of England” (1641), and of various devotional and other works. He died in destitution due to his becoming surety for debts owed by relatives of his wife. His literary work was all done in the Fleet.
Personal
He received the honour of Knighthood from K. Jam. I. at Theobalds; at which time this our Author (who lived at Highgate near London) was esteem’d a most compleat and learned Person: the benefit of which he reaped in his old Age, when his considerable Estate, was, thro’ suretiship, very much impaired. In 1620 he was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire, being then Lord of Middle Aston, and of other Lands therein, and, if I mistake not, a Justice of the Peace. He was a Person tall and comely, of a good disposition and admirable discourse, religious, and well read in various Faculties, especially in Div. and Hist. as it may appear by these Books following, which he mostly composed when he was forced to fly for shelter to his Studies and Devotions.
General
“Chronicle of the Kings of England from the time of the Roman Government, unto the death of K. Jam.” &c. Lond. 1641. &c. fol. Which Chronicle, as the Author saith, was collected with so great care and diligence, that if all other of our Chronicles were lost, this only would be sufficient to inform posterity of all passages memorable or worthy to be known, &c. However the Reader must know, that it being reduced to method, and not according to time, purposely to please Gentlemen and Novices, many chief things to be observed therein, as name, time, &c. are egregiously false, and consequently breed a great deal of confusion in the Peruser, especially if he be curious or critical.
My friend Sir Roger de Coverley told me t’other night, that he had been reading my paper upon Westminster-abbey, in which, says he, there are a great many ingenious fancies. He told me at the same time, that he observed I had promised another paper upon the tombs, and that he should be glad to go and see them with me, not having visited them since he had read history. I could not imagine how this came into the knight’s head, till I recollected that he had been very busy all last summer upon Baker’s “Chronicle,” which he has quoted several times in his disputes with Sir Andrew Freeport since his last coming to town. Accordingly I promised to call upon him the next morning, that we might go together to the abbey…. The glorious names of Henry the Fifth and queen Elizabeth gave the knight great opportunities of shining, and of doing justice to Sir Richard Baker, who, as our knight observed with some surprise, had a great many kings in him, whose monuments he had not seen in the abbey.
He wrote “Meditations and Disquisitions on the Lord’s Prayer,” and on several of the Psalms, “Apology for a Layman’s writing Divinity,” and a poem called “Cato’s Moral Distiches.” His chief work, however, and the only one by which he is at all known, is “Chronicle of the Kings of England.”… About the only history that Englishmen had until the publication of Rapin. The critics denounced it as unscholarly and inaccurate. But it was written in a pleasant, entertaining style, and it continued for a long time to be published and read, holding its place in the old-fashioned chimney-corners, on the same shelf with the Family Bible and Fox’s Book of Martyrs.
Baker’s name, though not his fame, has been kept alive by his connection with Sir Roger de Coverley in the “Spectator:” Addison, ridiculing the simple ignorance of the Tory squires in the person of Sir Roger, makes him quote Sir Richard Baker as a great authority. Poor Sir Richard is visited quite as bitterly as his rustic admirer:—“The glorious names of Henry the Fifth and Queen Elizabeth gave the Knight great opportunities of shining, and doing justice to Sir Richard Baker, who, as our Knight observed with some surprise, had a great many kings in him whose monuments he had not seen in the Abbey.” Baker’s popularity with country gentlemen was probably due to his style, which is praised by such an authority as Sir Henry Wotton—“full of sweet raptures and researching conceits, nothing borrowed, nothing vulgar, and yet all glowing with a certain equal facility.”
Its reputation with the learned never stood very high. Thomas Blount published at Oxford in 1672 “Animadversions upon Sr Richard Baker’s ‘Chronicle,’ and its continuation,” where eighty-two errors are noticed, but many of these are mere typographical mistakes. The serious errors imputed to the volume are enough, however, to prove that Baker was little of an historical scholar, and depended on very suspicious authorities.
