Rev. Richard Stanyhurst

Stanyhurst, Richard, Rev., an eminent author, was born in Dublin about 1545. [His father, James Stanyhurst, author of Pias Orationes, and other works, was Recorder of Dublin and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. He died in 1573.] Richard was educated at Oxford; studied law at Lincoln's Inn; returned to Ireland, married, and became a Catholic; removed to the Continent, where he lost his wife; and subsequently took orders, and became chaplain to the Archduke Albert of Austria. He died at Brussels in 1618. He was the author of several theological treatises, and translated the first four books of Virgil's Æneid into heroic verse; but the work with which his name is chiefly connected is his De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis, which, with an appendix out of Cambrensis, and some annotations, he published at Antwerp in 1584. It has been several times reprinted. Keating says the book abounds in errors, not to say malicious misrepresentations, but that he lived to repent the injustice thus done to the character of his countrymen, and when he entered into orders promised to recant publicly. The translation of Virgil has been generally condemned. His brother Walter is mentioned in Harris's Ware as the translator of a Latin work; and his son William, born in Belgium, who, like himself, became a Jesuit, wrote some works in Latin, enumerated by the same authority. Richard Stanyhurst was uncle of Archbishop Ussher.

Sources

16. Authors, Dictionary of British and American: S. Austin Allibone. 3 vols. Philadelphia, 1859-'71.

339. Ware, Sir James, Works: Walter Harris. 2 vols. Dublin, 1764.