# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Segar, Francis

Francis Seager in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
​SEGAR or SEAGER, FRANCIS (fl. 1549–1563), translator and poet, whose name, variously spelt, is that of an old Devonshire family, was probably the ‘Francis Nycholson, alias Seagar,’ who was made free of the Stationers' Company on 24 Sept. 1557. He was the author of: 1. ‘A brefe Declaration of the great and innumerable Myseries and Wretchednesses used i[n] Courtes ryall, made by a Lettre whych mayster Alayn Charatre wrote to hys Brother. Newly augmented, amplified and inrytched, by Francis Segar, B.L.,’ 1549, 12mo. A fragment of this tract is in the Bodleian Library. It was probably a new edition of Caxton's translation of Alain Chartier's ‘Curial.’ Prefixed to it are five four-line stanzas ‘to the reader’ by Segar (Ritson, Bibliographia Poetica, p. 327; Hazlitt, Handbook, p. 96). 2. ‘Certayne Psalmes select out of the Psalter of David, and drawen into Englishe metre, wyth Notes to every Psalme in iv. partes to Synge by F. S. Printed by William Seres,’ London, 1553, 8vo. This is dedicated in Sternhold's stanza to Lord Russell, by ‘your lordeshyps humble orator, Francys Seager.’ There are nineteen psalms, followed by a poem in the same metre entitled ‘A Description of the Lyfe of Man, the Worlde and Vanities thereof’ (Lowndes, under Psalms, p. 1996; Dibdin, Typographical Antiquities, iv. 200). 3. ‘The Schoole of Vertue and Booke of good Nourture for Chyldren and Youth to learne theyr dutie by newly perused, corrected and augmented by the fyrst Auctour F. S. With a briefe Declaration of the Dutie of eche degree. Printed by William Seres,’ 1557, 16mo. An acrostic giving the author's name (Seager) is prefixed to this volume, which is divided into twelve chapters of doggerel rhyme. This is the earliest known edition of a once popular work. It has been reprinted by the Early English Text Society in the ‘Babees Book,’ 1868 (pp. cxiii. 333–55). It was edited by Robert Crowley [q. v.], who added ‘certain prayers and graces,’ and abridged in Robert Weste's ‘Booke of Demeanor’ (1619, reprinted in 1817 and in 1868 in the ‘Babees Book’). Wood says that Crowley's version was in his time ‘commonly sold at the stalls of ballad-singers’ (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. vi. 452).
In the 1563 edition of the ‘Myrrour for Magistrates’ Segar has a poem of forty-four seven-line stanzas, entitled ‘How Richarde Plantagenet, Duke of Glocester, murdered his brother's Children, usurping the Crowne’ (No. 24). In the ensuing prose colloquy ‘the meetre’ of the poem is, with reason, complained of, but its irregularity defended as suitable to Richard's character. The poem reappears in the editions of 1571, 1575, 1578, and 1815 (p. xxi, and ii. 381–95).
Francis was perhaps a member of the yeoman family of Seagar or Segar of Broad ​Clyst, Devonshire, of whom a representative, John Seagar (d. 1656), graduated B.A. from Wadham College, Oxford, in May 1617, and M.A. from St. Mary Hall in June 1620. He received the living of Broadclyst from his kinsman, William Seagar, the patron, in 1631, and died at Pitminster, Somerset, on 13 April 1656, having published ‘The Discovery of the World to come’ (London, 1650, 4to; a copy is in Dr. Williams's Library). He subscribed his name to ‘The Joint Testimonie of the Ministers of Devon’ (1648), and he may be the ‘John Seager’ who married Dorothy Snelling at Plympton St. Mary on 11 Nov. 1622 (Vivian, Visit. of Devon. p. 694; Gardiner, Reg. of Wadham, i. 26; Oliver, Eccles. Antiq. i. 126; Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 276; Foster, Alumni Oxon.; note from the Rev. J. Ingle Dredge).
[Corser's Collectanea, pt. x. pp. 227–30; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 544; Cat. of Brit. Mus. Library; Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, 1871, iv. 142, 166, 199.]
R. B.