Between Scholarship and Church Politics

This book provides an account of the life and career of John Prideaux, regius professor of divinity at Oxford, 1615–42, rector of Exeter College, Oxford, 1612–42, and bishop of Worcester, 1641–6. The twelve chapters discuss his role in the church, the Calvinistic theology which he expounded in his lectures and books, his scholarship and place in the European republic of letters, and his opposition to the Arminians and their supposed leader, Archbishop Laud. It focuses particularly on the 1630s, when Laud was both chancellor of the university and archbishop of Canterbury, and when the two men clashed repeatedly. The book additionally emphasises Prideaux’s role as a college head, teacher, and writer of undergraduate textbooks who rebuilt his college on a grand scale, increased its undergraduate intake, and raised its reputation to new heights. It also describes his domestic circumstances and his loyalties, local and national: to his family, his colleagues and friends in church and college, and his native county of Devonshire. It concludes by charting his experiences during the early stages of the Long Parliament, as bishop of Worcester during the Civil War and, in his last years, as a scholar who returned to Oxford to produce some of his most outstanding theological and pedagogical works. The book portrays Prideaux as a man who lived in several different but related worlds and was a central figure in each of them.