the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Encyclopedias
John Whitgift
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or Policy against the Puritans, and in his vigorous enforcement of the subscription test, he thoroughly carried out the queen's policy of religious uniformity. He drew up articles aimed at nonconforming ministers, and obtained increased powers for the Court of High Commission. In 1586 he became a privy councillor. His action gave rise to the Marprelate tracts, in which the bishops and clergy were bitterly attacked. Through Whitgift's vigilance the printers of the tracts were, however, discovered and punished; and in order more effectually to check the publication of such opinions he got a law passed in 1593 making Puritanism an offence against the statute law. In the controversy between Walter Travers and Richard Hooker he interposed by prohibiting the preaching cf the former; and he moreover presented Hooker with the rectory of Boscombe in Wiltshire, in order to afford him more leisure to complete his Ecclesiastical Polity, a work which, however, cannot be said to represent either Whitgift's theological or his ecclesiastical standpoint. In 1595 he, in conjunction with the bishop of London and other prelates, drew up the Calvinistic instrument known as the Lambeth Articles, which were not accepted by the church. Whitgift attended Elizabeth on her deathbed, and crowned James I. He was present at the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604, and died at Lambeth on the 29th of the following February. He was buried in the church of Croydon, and his monument there with his recumbent effigy was in great part destroyed in the fire by which the church vas burnt down in 1867.
Whitgift is described by his biographer, Sir G. Paule, as of "middle stature, strong and well shaped, of a grave countenance and brown complexion, black hair and eyes, his beard neither long nor thick." He was noted for his hospitality, and was somewhat ostentatious in his habits, sometimes visiting Canterbury and other towns attended by a retinue of 800 horsemen. He left several unpublished works, which are included among the MSS. Angliae. Many of his letters, articles, injunctions &c., are calendared in the published volumes of the "State Paper" series of the reign of Elizabeth. His Collected Works, edited for the Parker Society by John Ayre (3 vols.,Cambridge, 1851-1853), include, besides the controversial tracts already alluded to, two sermons published during his lifetime, a selection from his letters to Cecil and others, and some portions of his unpublished MSS.
A Life of Whitgift by Sir G. Paule appeared in 1612, 2nd ed. 1649. It was embodied by John Strype in his Life and Acts of Whitgift (1718). There is also a life in C. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography (1810), W. F. Hook's Archbishops of Canterbury (1875), and vol. i. of Whitgift's Collected Works. See also C.H. Cooper's Athenae Cantabrigienses.
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'John Whitgift'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/j/john-whitgift.html. 1910.
