Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Babington, Churchill
BABINGTON, The Rev. Churchill, D.D., F.L.S., V.P.R.S.L., son of the late Rev. Matthew Drake Babington, rural dean of Ackley, Leicestershire, was born in 1821, and took a first class in classical honours in 1843, at St. John's College, Cambridge, of which he was a Fellow from 1846 to 1867, being elected to an honorary fellowship in 1880. He held the Chapelry of Horningsea, Cambridgeshire, from 1848 to 1861, was Disney Professor of Archæology from 1865 to 1880, and was presented by his college to the rectory of Cockfield, in Suffolk, in 1866. He wrote the Hulsean Prize Essay in 1846, on "The Influence of Christianity in promoting the Abolition of Slavery in Europe," and controverted, in a separate publication, in 1849, some of Macaulay's statements in reference to the clergy of the seventeenth century; and in 1865 published his introductory Lecture on Archæology, delivered before the University of Cambridge. He has edited, from MSS. recently discovered, "The Oration of Hyperides, against Demosthenes," "The Orations of Hyperides for Lycophron and Euxenippus," "The Funeral Oration of Hyperides," and "Bishop Pecock's Repressor;" also "Higden's Polychronicon" (with two ancient English versions), in the series of English historical works which have been brought out under the authority of her Majesty's Government. He reprinted, in facsimile, with an introduction, the "Beneficio di Cristo." Dr. Babington is the author of the classical portion of the catalogue of MSS. belonging to the University Library at Cambridge, of annotated catalogues of the Greek and English coins exhibited in the Fitzwilliam Museum; and has contributed largely on subjects connected with natural history to Sir W. Hooker's "Journal of Botany," "The Botanist's Guide to England and Wales," &c.; wrote the Ornithology, and, jointly with the Rev. A. Bloxam, the Botany for Potter's "History of Charnwood Forest," and the Lichens for Hooker's "Flora of New Zealand," and "Flora of Tasmania." Contributions from his pen will be found in the "Cambridge Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology," in the "Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature," in the publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, in the "Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archæology and Natural History," in the "Numismatic Chronicle," and in Smith and Cheetham's "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities." He was a public Examiner at Cambridge in Theology in 1857–8, and in Natural Science in 1863–4; was elected Corresponding Fellow of the Historico-Theological Society of Leipsig, and of the Archæological Society of Rome; and has, at various times, been a member of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, and of the Numismatic Society.