Christopher Harvey (poet)

Christopher Harvey (1597–1663) was an English clergyman and poet.

The son of the Rev. Christopher Harvey of Bunbury, Cheshire and his wife Ellen (Helen), he came from a Puritan background, his father's associates including William Hinde, Samuel Torshell and John Bruen. He was a batler of Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1613, and graduated B.A. 19 May 1617, becoming M.A. 1 February 1620. In 1630 he was rector of Whitney, Herefordshire; at Michaelmas 1632 he became head-master of Kington grammar school, but he seems to have returned to Whitney on or before the following 25 March, when a new head-master was appointed.

On 14 November 1639 Harvey was instituted to the vicarage of Clifton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire. He owed this preferment to his patron Sir Robert Whitney, according to a dedicatory epistle to Whitney in his edition of Thomas Pierson's Excellent Encouragements against Afflictions, 1647. His widowed mother had married Pierson.

Harvey was buried at Clifton on 4 April 1663.

Harvey was the author of The Synagogue, a series of devotional poems appended anonymously to the 1640 edition of George Herbert's The Temple, and reprinted with most of its later editions. The Synagogue is a derivative imitation of Herbert.

In 1647 Harvey issued anonymously Schola Cordis, or the Heart of it Selfe gone away from God; brought back againe to him; and instructed by him. In 47 Emblems; 2nd edition 1664; 3rd edition 1675. The volume has on the title-page "By the Author of the Synagogue". The emblems were adapted from Benedictus van Haeften's Schola Cordis. This work was a free adaptation, with the engravings made freshly and reversed. It was later reissued as The School of the Heart, and wrongly attributed to Francis Quarles.

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