John Prideaux: Life and Afterlife

This chapter draws together the threads of the previous chapters to provide a conclusion. It emphasises Prideaux’s dual role throughout his life both as the consistent defender of the traditional Calvinist order in the Church of England and, from 1612 onwards, as the respected and successful head of a thriving Oxford college. It argues that he owed his rise to eminence both to patronage and the support of powerful men and to his own personal qualities. Some of those qualities—industriousness, humanity, and a punning sense of humour—are enumerated and discussed, together with the less sympathetic aspects of his personality. His posthumous publications are noted, including the full and final edition of his works edited by Samuel Maresius and published at Zurich in 1672. The chapter concludes with a general assessment of Prideaux’s ‘afterlife’, including the reasons for the survival of his reputation beyond his death, and the importance of Thomas Barlow, David Lloyd, and Anthony Wood in preserving that reputation. But after about 1675 his name faded as his style of academic theology declined and as the demand waned for the sort of humane and cultured education which Prideaux and his College had provided.