[2] On 15 August 1557, William Bavand was admitted to the Middle Temple in London, one of the Inns of Court, where young men were trained in the law.
In 1558, Bavand himself stood pledge to Thomas Bowyer of London (d. 1595), who married Magdalen, the daughter of the exiled theologian Bartholomew Traheron.
[9] The text is a close translation of the recently printed De republica bene instituenda paraenesis (1556) of Johannes Ferrarius, rector of the Protestant university of Marburg in Germany.
Ferrarius is given to illustrate his points with extracts from the great Latin poets of antiquity, and Bavand translates them into English verse.
His achievement was noted by Jasper Heywood in the verse preface to his translation of Seneca’s Thyestes, where Bavand is one of a group of poets at the Inns of Court whom he praises as ‘Minerva’s men’.
Heywood writes : ‘There Bavand bides, that turn’d his tool, a Commonwealth to frame, | And greater grace in English gives to worthy author’s name’.