Anglican clergyman, best known as author of Micro-cosmographie. Or, A Peece of the World Discovered; in Essayes and Characters (1628; enlarged 1629 and 1630).

An outstanding book of “characters,” it avoids didacticism and displays genuine personalities, such as a “child,” a “Good old Man,” a “young raw Preacher,” and a “Grave Divine.” It is alive with its humour, perception, and epigrammatic brilliance. Earle's wit, learning, and tolerance were widely praised, and, though a Royalist Anglican, he tried to conciliate Nonconformists.

At the University of Oxford as student from c. 1616 and as fellow from 1619, he wrote occasional verse and tutored Lucius Cary (later Lord Falkland, a statesman, philosopher, and poet), to whose circle he belonged. He later tutored the future king Charles II and suffered exile during 1644–60. Meanwhile he translated into Latin the Eikon Basilike (“Royal Image”), an extremely popular book of meditations supposedly by Charles I and published about the time of his execution, and Richard Hooker's Of the lawes of ecclesiasticall politie. After the Restoration, he became bishop successively of Worcester and of Salisbury.