George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury
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The Most Reverend and Right Honourable George Abbot |
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| Archbishop of Canterbury | |
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| Installed | 4 March 1611 |
| Term ended | 5 August 1633 |
| Predecessor | Richard Bancroft |
| Successor | William Laud |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 19 October 1562 Guildford, Surrey, England |
| Died | 5 August 1633 (aged 70) Croydon, Surrey, England |
George Abbot (19 October 1562 – 5 August 1633) was an English divine who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1611 to 1633. He also served as the fourth Chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin, from 1612 to 1633.
The Chambers Biographical Dictionary describes him as "[a] sincere but narrow-minded Calvinist". Among his five brothers,Robert became Bishop of Salisbury and Maurice became Lord Mayor of London. He was a translator of the King James Version.
Born at Guildford in Surrey, where his father Maurice Abbot (died 1606) was a cloth-worker, he was taught at the Royal Grammar School, Guildford. According to an eighteenth century biographical dictionary, when Abbot's mother was pregnant with him she had a dream in which she was told that if she ate a pike her child would be a son and rise to great prominence. Some time afterwards she accidentally caught a pike while fetching water from the River Wey and it "being reported to some gentlemen in the neighbourhood, they offered to stand sponsors for the child, and afterwards shewed him many marks of favour." He later studied, and then taught, at Balliol College, Oxford, was chosen Master of University College in 1597, and appointed Dean of Winchester in 1600. He was three times Vice-Chancellor of the University, and took a leading part in preparing the authorised version of the New Testament. In 1608, he went to Scotland with George Home, 1st Earl of Dunbar to arrange for a union between the churches of England and Scotland. He so pleased King James in this affair that he was made Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1609 and was translated to the see of London a month afterwards.
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