BAKER, SIR RICHARD (1568-1645).—­Historian and religious writer, studied law, was knighted in 1603, and was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire 1620.  B. was the author of The Chronicle of the Kings of England (1643), which was for long held as a great authority among the country gentlemen.  It has, however, many errors.  B. fell on evil days, was thrown into the Fleet for debt incurred by others, for which he had made himself responsible, and d. there.  It was during his durance that the Chronicle and some religious treatises were composed.  The Chronicle was continued by Edward Phillips, Milton’s nephew, who became a strong Royalist.

BAKER, SIR SAMUEL WHITE (1821-1893).—­Traveller, b. in London, and after being a planter in Ceylon, and superintending the construction of a railway between the Danube and the Black Sea, went with his wife, a Hungarian lady, in search of the sources of the Nile, and discovered the great lake, Albert Nyanza.  B. was knighted in 1866, and was for 4 years Governor-General of the Equatorial Nile Basin.  His books, which are all on travel and sport, are well written and include Albert Nyanza (1866), Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia (1867).

BALE, JOHN (1495-1563).—­Historian and controversialist, b. at Cove, Suffolk, and ed. as a Carmelite friar, but becoming a Protestant, engaged in violent controversy with the Roman Catholics.  After undergoing persecution and flying to Flanders, he was brought back by Edward VI. and made Bishop of Ossory.  On the death of Edward he was again persecuted, and had to escape from Ireland to Holland, but returned on the accession of Elizabeth, who made him a Prebendary of Canterbury.  His chief work is a Latin Account of the Lives of Eminent Writers of Great Britain.  Besides this he wrote some dramas on scriptural subjects, and an account of the trial and death of Sir John Oldcastle.  He wrote in all 22 plays, of which only 5 have come down, the names of certain of which give some idea of their nature, e.g., The Three Leaves of Nature, Moses and Christ, and The Temptacyon of Our Lord.

BALLANTINE, JAMES (1808-1877).—­Artist and author, b. in Edinburgh, began life as a house painter.  He studied art, and became one of the first to revive the art of glass-painting, on which subject he wrote a treatise.  He was the author of The Gaberlunzie’s Wallet (1843), Miller of Deanhaugh (1845), Poems (1856), 100 Songs with Music (1865), and a Life of David Roberts, R.A. (1866).