Humphrey Prideaux
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Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724), Doctor of Divinity and scholar, belonged to an ancient Cornish family, was born at Padstow, and educated at Westminster School and at Oxford.
He first attracted notice by his description of the Arundel marbles (1676), which gained for him powerful patrons, and he rose to be Dean of Norwich. Among his other works were an anti-Islamic Life of Mahomet (1697), and The Old and New Testament connected in the History of the Jews and Neighbouring Nations (1715–17), long an important work, of which many editions were brought out. It is credited as the first source in English to use the term Vulgar Era,[1][2] though Kepler used the term as early as 1635.[3]
Like many high churchmen of his day, Prideaux has to be as much concerned with politics as with religion. In January 1674, for instance, Prideaux recorded in his letters a visit to his home of William Levett, a fellow Doctor of Divinity from Oxford, Principal of Magdalen Hall (and later Dean of Bristol). With Levett came Lord Cornbury, son of the Earl of Clarendon, Levett's principal patron. In other letters, Prideaux mentioned alliances with Levett in ongoing church political maneuverings.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ "History of the use of BCE/CE and AD/BC to identify dates". http://www.religioustolerance.org/ce_info.htm.
- ^ "vulgar era - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vulgar%20era.
- ^ "Earliest so-far-found use of vulgar era in English (1635)". http://books.google.com/books?id=TIl2GwAACAAJ&dq=%22vulgar+era%22. Retrieved on 2007-12-18. Johann Kepler, Adriaan Vlacq. Ephemerides of the Celestiall Motions, for the Yeers of the Vulgar Era 1633....
- ^ Letters of Humphrey Prideaux, Sometime Dean of Norwich, to John Ellis, Some Under-secretary of State, 1674-1722, John Ellis, Edward Maunde Thompson, Printed for the Camden society, Nichols and Sons, London, 1875
This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.
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