Herbert Thorndike

Herbert Thorndike (1598 – 11 June, 1672) was an English academic and clergyman, known as an orientalist and Canon of Westminster Abbey. He was an influential theological writer during the reigns of King Charles I and, after the Restoration, King Charles II. His work would be considered important in the 19th century by key members of the Oxford Movement.

He was the third son of Francis Thorndike, a Lincolnshire gentleman of good family, and Alice, his wife, daughter of Edward Colman, of a family resident at Burnt Ely Hale, and at Waldingfield in Suffolk. On 18 December 1613 he entered as a pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was elected a scholar the following Easter. In January 1617 he proceeded B.A., in 1618 was elected a minor fellow, and in 1620 (on his admission to the degree of M.A.) a major fellow of the college. He was a committed scholar, also active as a college tutor, deputy public orator, and university preacher, and occasionally resided on his college living. His studies were on theology and oriental languages, and especially rabbinical literature. As a churchman, he was a moderate.

On 13 April 1636 he was installed by Bishop John Williams prebendary of Layton Ecclesia in Lincoln Cathedral, just vacated by the death of his friend George Herbert. In 1640 he resigned his stall on his preferment to the crown living of Claybrook, near Lutterworth. In October 1640 he was appointed Hebrew lecturer to his college, and in June 1642 was transferred from Claybrook to the living of Barley, Hertfordshire (also pro hac vice in the gift of the crown); while at Trinity he received, about the same time, the additional appointment of senior bursar.

In 1641 he published at the University Press his first tractate, Of the Government of Churches: a Discourse pointing at the Primitive Form, and in the following year Of Religious Assemblies, and the Publick Service of God. In September 1643, the mastership of Sidney Sussex College having fallen vacant, his friend Seth Ward who was a fellow of there, in conjunction with a majority of the other fellows, sought to carry Thorndike's election as Master; but Oliver Cromwell, who caused one of Thorndike's supporters to be arrested and taken away, managed the election of Richard Minshull. In 1644 the disfavour into which Trinity College had fallen with the parliamentary party compelled Thorndike to retire from his living of Barley, which was sequestered to Henry Prime, a parishioner; in 1647 one Peter Smith was appointed minister, on whose death (August 1657) Nathanael Ball succeeded. At nearly the same time a large number of the fellows of Trinity were ejected, and Thorndike deemed it prudent to withdraw from Cambridge. Until 1652 he had practical troubles, but was assisted by his college and by the liberality of John Scudamore, 1st Viscount Scudamore, whose religious views were close to his own. His elder brother Francis, who had succeeded to the paternal estate in 1644, probably gave him substantial aid. His Right of the Church in a Christian State (1649) was printed in London, and a new enlarged edition of his two tractates was printed by the University Press, connected with the prescribed use of the Directory of Public Worship.

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