John Studley

He made English versions of four of Seneca's tragedies, as well as one of John Bale's lengthy Pageant of Popes.

Nathaniel married Elizabeth Jilbert, daughter and sole heir of John Jylbert of Sevenoaks, Kent.

Studley dedicated the translation to sir William Cecil, to whom he at some point also addressed Latin verses in manuscript.

When Thomas Newton published Seneca his Ten Tragedies in 1580, he reprinted Studley’s Agamemnon and Medea, and also his translations of Hippolytus and Hercules Oetaeus.

On 28 October 1573, Studley was instituted to the rectory of Ockham, near Woking, Surrey, in the diocese of Winchester.

His commitment to the puritan cause was confirmed in 1574, when his translation of The Pageant of the Popes, written in Latin by John Bale, was published by Thomas Marsh.

At some point in his time at Ockham, he gave a sermon at nearby Bisley, for he complained in a letter to sir William More of nearby Loseley, that he had been slandered by a certain John Rumsey, who said he had made a lewd comparison between the Roman Catholic pax and the female genitals.

He wrote to More on another occasion to tell him that he had successfully pursued and had arrested a man called Middleton, whom he accused of having long ago done mischief to a maidservant of a local family.

To the Agamemnon he added a scene at the close, in which he renarrated the death of Cassandra, the imprisonment of Electra, and the flight of Orestes.

Spearing's judgement in 1912 has not been seriously challenged in the hundred years that have followed : 'He is certainly no great poet, but he occasionally has some fine lines'.

[9] Ker and Winston offer a detailed and broadly sympathetic view of Studley's style in their 2013 edition (inter alia) of the Agamemnon.