author
Lawrence Echard
d. 1730
Best known for a once-popular History of England, this early-18th-century clergyman wrote clear, accessible works that helped shape how many readers met the past. His career joined church life, translation, and historical writing in equal measure.
1 Audiobook
Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694)
by Lawrence Echard
About the author
Laurence Echard (often also spelled Lawrence) was an English historian and clergyman, born around 1670 in Barsham, Suffolk. He studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, took holy orders, and went on to hold church livings in Lincolnshire.
Alongside his work in the Church, he became known for writing and translating historical and classical works. His best-known achievement was The History of England, a large-scale history that was widely read in its time and treated as a standard work by many readers.
Later in life, Echard became Archdeacon of Stow and also held positions connected with Lincoln and, later, Suffolk. He died in 1730. Though he is less widely remembered now than some later historians, his books give a vivid sense of how history was written and read in the early 1700s.