John Worthington (academic)

John Worthington (1618–1671) was an English academic. He was closely associated with the Cambridge Platonists.^[1][2][3] He did not in fact publish in the field of philosophy, and is now known mainly as a well-connected diarist.

Life

He was born in Manchester, and educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.^[4] At Emmanuel he was taught by Joseph Mead; he described Mead's teaching methods, and later edited his works.^[5] Another teacher was Benjamin Whichcote.^[6]

He was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, from 1650 to 1660, and Vice-Chancellor in 1657.^[7] At the English Restoration he was replaced by Richard Sterne, apparently willingly.^[8] Subsequently he held various church positions, being lecturer at St Benet Fink in London until burnt out in the Great Fire of London in 1666. He then was given a living at Ingoldsby. At the end of his life he was a lecturer in Hackney.^[9]

Family

He married Mary Whichcote, in 1657. She was niece to Benjamin Whichcote.^[10][11][12]

Hartlib correspondence

Worthington was an active correspondent of Samuel Hartlib, the "intelligencer", in the period 1655 to 1662.^[6] At Worthington's request, Hartlib's close collaborator John Dury searched in the Netherlands for the lost papers of Henry Ainsworth.^[13] He shared with Hartlib and Dury (and both Henry More and John Covel) an interest in the Karaites.^[14]

After Hartlib's death, Worthington took on the task of organising his archive of correspondence, which had been bought by William Brereton, 2nd Baron Brereton.^[15] After a period of nearly 300 years, the bundles into which he sorted it were rediscovered, and his system for the archive persists.^[16]

Works

• The Christian's Pattern: a translation of the De Imitatione of Thomas à Kempis (1654)
• John Smith, Selected Discourses (London, 1660) editor
• Life of Joseph Mede with third edition of Mede's Works (1672)
• The Great Duty of Self-Resignation to the Divine Will (1675)
• Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington 2 vols. (1847–86, Chetham Society) editor James Crossley

Notes

References

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Mullinger, James Bass (1900). "Worthington, John". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography 63. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 

External links

• CCED page