Bancroft only followed most of his contemporaries; but it was peculiarly unfortunate for him that he should have raised a lofty structure of dialectic upon that foundation of sand. The single fact, which he might easily have verified in the West Indies, that malarious conditions are irrelevant for yellow fever, should have kept him right. Murchison's statement that 'the doctrine of Bancroft was generally adopted, without investigation of the facts upon which it was founded,' may be accepted as true, without prejudice to the facts that may have been collected in support of the same dogma by subsequent writers. The popularity of the ab æterno doctrine of febrile contagion, which is said to have followed Bancroft's 'Essay on Yellow Fever,' &c., is rather an evidence of his skill in word-fence than of his scientific fairness of mind.
[Munk's Roll, iii. 31; Bancroft's works.]
BANCROFT, GEORGE (fl. 1548), translator, was a divine of the church of England, who, for the edifying of his dear brethren in Christ and for the prevention of their deception by crafty connivance, translated into the English tongue the 'Responsio Prædicatorum Basileensium in defensionem rectæ Administrationis Cœnee Dominicæ.' The preface is dedicated to the right worshipful and his 'singuler good Master Silvester Butler,' and wishes him 'prosperitye and healthe boeth of bodye and soule.' The book is written in the common heated fashion of his time. It speaks of the clergy of the Roman Catholic church as 'devilles apes,' 'beastly bishops of Babylon,' and 'maskinge masse priestes.' The precise title of Bancroft's book is 'The Answere that the Preachers of the Gospel at Basile made for the defence of the true administration and use of the holy Supper of our Lord. Agaynst the abhominatiō of the Popyshe Masse. Translated out of Latin into Englyshe by George Bancrafte, 1548.'
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hibern. p. 72; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Brit. Mus. Catal.]
BANCROFT, JOHN, D.D. (1574–1640), the seventh bishop of Oxford, was born in 1574 at Asthall, a village between Burford and Witney, in Oxfordshire. He was the son of Christopher, brother to Archbishop Bancroft ; and his paternal grandmother was a niece of Hugh Curwen, second bishop of Oxford [q. v.]. He was educated at Westminster School, where, under the mastership of Edward Grant, 'the most noted Latinist and Grecian of his time,' he remained till 1592. He was elected to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, in that year, and took the degree of B.A. in 1596, and of M.A. in 1599. For some time after graduating he is known to have preached in and about Oxford, and before quitting Christ Church to have acted as tutor to Robert Burton, 'Democritus Junior,' the author of the 'Anatomy of Melancholy.' In 1601 he was presented by his uncle, at that time bishop of London, to the rectory of Finchley, Middlesex, vacant by the death of Richard Latewar, who, while in attendance on Lord Mountjoy as his chaplain, was killed in a battle with Irish rebels at Carlingford. This living Bancroft retained till 1608.
On the occasion of a visit of King James I to Christ Church in 1605, he composed a Latin poem, which was printed with others in 'Musa Hospitalis.' In 1607 he took his B.D. degree. In 1608 he was presented by his uncle, who had become archbishop of Canterbury, to the living of Orpington in Kent, and in the following year to that of Biddenden, in the same county, both of which, being sinecures, he continued to hold later in commendam with his bishopric. The rectory of Woodchurch, Kent, he resigned in 1633. In 1609 he obtained the degree of D.D., and was presented with the prebend of Maplesbury, St. Paul's, on the resignation of Dr. Samuel Harsnett. On 2 March 1609-10 he was elected master of University College, Oxford. For a period of twenty-three years he discharged the duties of this office with I considerable administrative ability, settling on a firm basis the rights of the college to its various landed estates. He had an aptitude for affairs of this nature, as was seen later in the part he took in giving effect to Laud's benefactions to St. John's College, and more strikingly in his erection of the palace at Cuddesdon, soon after his elevation to the episcopal bench. It might be said of him with truth that he was made rather for a good steward than for a great ecclesiastic. In 1629, however, he was chosen one of the delegates to revise the university statutes. Though sharing the high church opinions of his uncle, the primate, who died in 1610, and of his friend Laud, Bancroft took no prominent part in the controversies between high churchmen and puritans that raged in Oxford while he was presiding over University College. Bancroft's mastership of University College terminated on 23 Aug. 1632, on his appointment to the bishopric of Oxford. Severe language is used concerning his conduct as a bishop, in the charge drawn up by Prynne against Laud, who, when bishop of London, had procured Bancroft's elevation to the episcopal bench; 'and what a
