John Prideaux

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See of Worcester impaling
Prideaux
Arms of Prideaux: Argent, a chevron sable in chief a label of three points gules[1]

John Prideaux (7 September 1578 – 29 July 1650) was an English academic and Bishop of Worcester.

Early life

The fourth son of John and Agnes Prideaux, he was born at

Rector and William Helme as tutor.[2]

Prideaux took holy orders soon after 1603, and was appointed chaplain to Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. Matthew Sutcliffe named him in 1609 one of the fellows of his Chelsea College.[2]

Rector and Regius Professor

Prideaux was admitted

Anthony Ashley Cooper, his pupil from 1636 to 1638, records that he could be just and kindly to excitable undergraduates.[2] Another of his students was Dutch Reformed theologian Sixtinus Amama
.

After the death of Prince Henry in 1612, Prideaux was appointed chaplain to the

Oxford University in succession to Robert Abbot; to this office a canonry of Christ Church was annexed. He received subsequently the vicarage of Chalgrove, Oxfordshire, in 1620, a canonry in Salisbury Cathedral 17 June 1620, the rectory of Bladon in 1625, and the rectory of Ewelme, Oxfordshire, in 1629.[2]

Prideaux was in post as

Principal. In defiance of the fellows, he installed Francis Mansell, the nominee of Lord Pembroke, then chancellor, and expelled most of the dissentients.[2]

It was as Regius Professor of Divinity that Prideaux came most into contact with actual politics. For 26 years, he had to preside at theological disputations, in which the unorthodox found supporters. He maintained throughout a conservative position, without altogether alienating the extremists. To young

Arminian views was unfriendly. On the other hand, Laud respected him, and asked him in 1636 to revise William Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants, and he always remained one of the royal chaplains.[2]

Later life

Prideaux was one of the miscellaneous theologians summoned by the lords' committee 1 March 1641, to meet in the Jerusalem Chamber and discuss plans of church reform under the lead of John Williams. In the autumn Charles, in filling the five vacant sees, promoted four bishops and appointed Prideaux to the fifth, that of Worcester. Prideaux was consecrated on 19 December 1641, and installed a few weeks later; he was thus engaged at Worcester when Williams and his eleven colleagues assembled to make their protest, 29 December, and so escaped impeachment. He was one of the three peers, all bishops, who dissented when the bill for excluding the spiritual peers from parliament was read a third time, 5 February 1642. That the commons were not hostile to Prideaux was shown by his nomination as one of the Westminster Assembly in April 1642. He never attended any of its meetings, and, returning to Worcester, gradually identified himself with the royalists; so that in the list of the Assembly in the ordinance of June 1643 his name no longer appears.[2]

He was deprived of his See by Parliament on 9 October 1646, as episcopacy was abolished for the duration of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate.[3][4] He maintained himself in his diocese until the end of the war, and was in Worcester when the city capitulated to Thomas Rainsborough. Deprived of what remained to him of the episcopal estates, he sought a refuge with his son-in-law, Dr Henry Sutton, rector of Bredon, Worcestershire. His last years were spent in comparative poverty, and he had to sell his library to provide for his family. He died of fever at Bredon on 29 July 1650 and was buried in the chancel of the church there 15 August.[2]

Views

Described as one of the most influential

Calvinists inside the Church,[5] he was censured in 1631 for his tolerance of preachers in Oxford attacking William Laud.[6]

He was widely disliked by the Laudian party in the Church of England. Richard Montagu, one of Laud's supporters, called him ‘that jackanapes’ and ‘the Bedlam of Exeter’, hardly complimentary things to say about one of Oxford's most renowned heads of house. There was an unusually high presence of staunch Protestants at Exeter, and its reputation as anti-Laudian was clear (it was the only college not to have its altar in the position required by the Laudian statutes). Prideaux's position at the apex of the College allowed his influence to permeate every aspect of its life, academic and religious, and Exeter's appeal as a centre of Protestant scholarship must have stemmed in large part from him.[7]

Works

Matthias Prideaux, a Royalist soldier, was his son, and predeceased him in 1646. John Prideaux edited his work on history.[8]

He wrote a substantial academic treatise, Hypomnemata, as well as theological works.

References

  1. Heraldic Visitations
    of Devon, p.616
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h s:Prideaux, John (1578-1650) (DNB00)
  3. ^ Plant, David (2002). "Episcopalians". BCW Project. Retrieved 25 April 2021.
  4. JSTOR 564164
    .
  5. ^ Hugh Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, p. 44.
  6. ^ Trevor-Roper, Laud, p. 116.
  7. ^ PDF Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine, p. 22.
  8. Christopher Hill
    , The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993), p. 29 footnote.

Sources

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Prideaux, John (1578-1650)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

Academic offices
Preceded by Rector of Exeter College, Oxford
1612–1642 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford

1615–1642 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University

1619–1621 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University
1624–1626 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University
1641–1642/3 		Succeeded by
Robert Pincke/John Tolson
Church of England titles
Preceded by Bishop of Worcester
1641–1646 		Succeeded by
none until
English Restoration
then George Morley
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