EACHARD, JOHN: English clergyman and satirist; b. in Suffolk c. 1636; d. at Cambridge July 7, 1697. He studied at Catherine Hall, Cambridge, of which he became Master in 1675. He was created D.D., by royal mandamus in 1675 and was elected vice-chancellor of the university in 1679 and again in 1695. He published, anonymously his famous essay, The Grounds and Decisions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion, inquired into in a Letter to R. L. (London, 1670), in which he attributed the failure of the clergy to their defective education. Other works from his pen are, Some Observations upon the Answer to an Enquiry . . . in a second Letter to R. L. (London, 1671), a sequel to the foregoing; Mr. Hobbs' State of Nature . . . (London, 1672); and Some Opinions of Mr. Hobbs (1673). Eachard was master of a light bantering style that was particularly effective in satire, but he did not succeed in serious writing. The best collected edition of his works was published in London in three volumes, 1774.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: A Life, by T. Davies, is prefixed to the Collected Works, ut sup.; DNB, xvi. 302-303.