Sir Nathaniel Brent

Sir Nathaniel Brent (1573?-1652) was Warden of Merton College Oxford. His name is on the chapel wall at Merton. In the old library at Merton his family crest is displayed.. He published a translation into English of Pietro Soave Polano's Historia del Concilio Tridentino.

From the Pearsall family web site we find:

Sir Nathaniel Brent, L.L.D. was Warden of Merton College, Oxford and Proctor of the University in 1607. He was admitted Bachelor of Law October 11, 1623. Elected warden of Merton College in 1622, he was afterwards appointed Commissary of the diocese of Canterbury and Vicar General to the archbishop, and later became judge of the Prerogative Court.

Nathaniel Brent was a hostile witness at the trial of Archbishop Laud in 1638. In 1645 Charles I deposed him from his office at Oxford. Upon Fairfax capturing Oxford town in 1646, Nathaniel Brent returned to the college where he resumed his post. In 1647 he was appointed president of the famous parliament commission for the due correction of offences, abuses and disorders in the university. The work of the comission was too mild, so in 1649 Fairfax and Cromwell paid a visit to the university, after which the correction of abuses proceeded with greater certainty of punishment being administered to the offending royalist. He was at heart a supporter of the kingdom and retired rather than sign the engagement which would have bound him to support a commonwealth without a king or a house of lords. He retired to his house in Little Britain, London, where he died November 6 1652.

Sir Nathaniel Brent's will is available here.

For further information about Sir Nathaniel Brent, see the (British) Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 6, pages 262-264,