EARLE, JOHN (c. 1601-1665), English divine, was born at York about 1601. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, but migrated to Merton, where he obtained a fellowship. In 1631 he was proctor and also chaplain to Philip, earl of Pembroke, then chancellor of the university, who presented him to the rectory of Bishopston in Wiltshire. His fame spread, and in 1641 he was appointed chaplain and tutor to Prince Charles. In 1643 he was elected one of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, but his sympathies with the king and with the Anglican Church were so strong that he declined to sit. Early in 1643 he was chosen chancellor of the cathedral of Salisbury, but of this preferment he was soon deprived as a “malignant.” After Cromwell’s great victory at Worcester, Earle went abroad, and was named clerk of the closet and chaplain to Charles II. He spent a year at Antwerp in the house of Isaac Walton’s friend, George Morley, who afterwards became bishop of Winchester. He next joined the duke of York (James II.) at Paris, returning to England at the Restoration. He was at once appointed dean of Westminster, and in 1661 was one of the commissioners for revising the liturgy. He was on friendly terms with Richard Baxter. In November 1662 he was consecrated bishop of Worcester, and was translated, ten months later, to the see of Salisbury, where he conciliated the nonconformists. He was strongly opposed to the Conventicle and Five Mile Acts. During the great plague Earle attended the king and queen at Oxford, and there he died on the 17th of November 1665.
Earle’s chief title to remembrance is his witty and humorous work entitled Microcosmographie, or a Peece of the World discovered, in Essayes and Characters, which throws light on the manners of the time. First published anonymously in 1628, it became very popular, and ran through ten editions in the lifetime of the author. The style is quaint and epigrammatic; and the reader is frequently reminded of Thomas Fuller by such passages as this: “A university dunner is a gentlemen follower cheaply purchased, for his own money has hyr’d him.” Several reprints of the book have been issued since the author’s death; and in 1671 a French translation by J. Dymock appeared with the title of Le Vice ridiculé. Earle was employed by Charles II. to make the Latin translation of the Eikon Basilike, published in 1649. A similar translation of R. Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity was accidentally destroyed.
“Dr Earle,” says Lord Clarendon in his Life, “was a man of great piety and devotion, a most eloquent and powerful preacher, and of a conversation so pleasant and delightful, so very innocent, and so very facetious, that no man’s company was more desired and loved. No man was more negligent in his dress and habit and mien, no man more wary and cultivated in his behaviour and discourse. He was very dear to the Lord Falkland, with whom he spent as much time as he could make his own.”
See especially Philip Bliss’s edition of the Microcosmographie (London, 1811), and E. Arber’s Reprint (London, 1868).
EARLE, RALPH (1751-1801), American historical and portrait painter, was born at Leicester, Massachusetts, on the 11th of May 1751. Like so many of the colonial craftsmen, Earle was self-taught, and for many years was an itinerant painter. He went with the Governor’s Guard to Lexington and made battle sketches, from which in 1775 he painted four scenes, engraved by Amos Doolittle, which are probably the first historical paintings by an American. After the War of Independence, Earle went to London, entered the studio of Benjamin West, and painted the king and many notables. After his return to America in 1786 he made portraits of Timothy Dwight, Governor Caleb Strong, Roger Sherman, and other prominent men. He also painted a large picture of Niagara Falls. He died at Bolton, Connecticut, on the 16th of August 1801.
EARL MARSHAL, in England, a functionary who ranks as the eighth of the great officers of state. He is the head of the college of arms, and has the appointment of the kings-of-arms, heralds and pursuivants at his discretion. He attends the sovereign in opening and closing the session of parliament, walking opposite to the lord great chamberlain on his or her right hand. It is his duty to make arrangements for the order of all state processions and ceremonials, especially for coronations and royal marriages and funerals. Like the lord high constable he rode into Westminster Hall with the champion after a coronation, till the coronation banquet was abandoned, taking his place on the left hand, and with the lord great chamberlain he assists at the introduction of all newly-created peers into the House of Lords.
The marshal appears in the feudal armies to have been in command of the cavalry under the constable, and to have in some measure superseded him as master of the horse in the royal palace. He exercised joint and co-ordinate jurisdiction with the constable in the court of chivalry, and afterwards became the sole judge of that tribunal till its obsolescence. The marshalship of England was formerly believed to have been inherited from the Clares by the Marshal family, who had only been marshals of the household. It was held, however, by the latter family, as the office of chief (magister) marshal, as early as the days of Henry I. Through them, under Henry III., it passed to the Bigods, as their eldest co-heirs. In 1306 it fell to the crown on the death of the last Bigod, earl of Norfolk, who had made Edward I. his heir, and in 1316 it was granted by Edward II. to his own younger brother, Thomas “of Brotherton,” earl of Norfolk. As yet the style of the office was only “marshal” although the last Bigod holder, being an earl, was sometimes loosely spoken of as the earl marshal. The office, having reverted to the crown, was granted out anew by Richard II., in 1385, to Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, the representative of Thomas “of Brotherton.” In 1386 the style of “earl marshal” was formally granted to him in addition. After several attainders and partial restorations in the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts, the earl marshalship was granted anew to the Howards by Charles II. in 1672 and entailed on their male line, with many specific remainders and limitations, under which settlement it has regularly descended to the present duke of Norfolk. Its holders, however, could not execute the office until the Roman Catholic emancipation, and had to appoint deputies. The duke is styled earl marshal “and hereditary marshal of England,” but the double style would seem to be an error, though the Mowbrays, with their double creation (1385, 1386) might have claimed it. His Grace appends the letters “E.M.” to his signature, and bears behind his shield two batons crossed in saltire, the marshal’s rod (virga) having been the badge of the office from Norman times. There appear to have been hereditary marshals of Ireland, but their history is not well ascertained. The Keiths were Great Marischals of Scotland from at least the days of Robert Bruce, and were created earls marischal in or about 1458, but lost both earldom and office by the attainder of George, the 10th earl, in 1716. (See also [Marshal]; [State, Great Officers of].)