John Stevens

John Stevens (c. 1662 – 1726)

Life Stevens was born in London, where his father was a page to Catherine of Braganza, and was educated by Benedictines at Douai, around 1675. He was bilingual, speaking Spanish from infancy, presumably with his mother. He served in the forces sent to quell Monmouth's Rebellion, and went with Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon to Dublin in 1685. He then through the Hyde connection became a tax official at Welshpool.

Before 1695 Stevens had settled again in London. From that time till his death he was engaged in translations, and historical and antiquarian compilations. He was editor of the British Mercury from 1712 to 1715. He died on 27 October 1726. As a further continuation of the Monasticon Anglicanum Stevens issued anonymously in 1722, his Monasticon Hibernicum (a translation, with additions and alterations, of Louis Augustin Alémand's Histoire Monastique d'Irlande 1690). Stevens also translated Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. The rendering is very literal; some of the notes were used in William Hurst's version, published in 1814. Stevens's translation formed the basis of that of John Allen Giles (1840), and of that issued in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (1847).

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