John Austin

AUSTIN, John. b. Walpole, Norfolk, 1613; d. London, 1669 (buried 31 March). He was educated at the grammar school, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, and St John’s College, Cambridge. He became a Roman Catholic sometime between 1632 and 1640. He entered Lincoln’s Inn to study for the Bar, but abandoned the law and became tutor to the Catholic Fowler family at the priory of St Thomas near Stafford. He published Devotions in the Antient Way of Offices Containing Exercises for every day in the Week (Paris, 1668), a devotional manual containing 39 hymns. Some of the hymns were adaptations of work by Richard Crashaw*, and others were Austin’s own. A second edition (Rouen, 1672) was brought out by his...