Hugh Broughton

Hugh Broughton (1549 – 4 August 1612) was an English scholar and theologian.

He was born at Owlbury, Bishop's Castle, Shropshire. He calls himself a Cambrian, implying Welsh blood in his veins. He was educated by Bernard Gilpin at Houghton-le-Spring and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1570. The foundation of his Hebrew learning was laid, in his first year at Cambridge, by his attendance on the lectures of the French scholar Antoine Rodolphe Chevallier.

Broughton graduated B.A. in 1570, and became fellow of St John's College and afterwards of Christ's College. He had influential patrons at the university; Sir Walter Mildmay made him an allowance for a private lectureship in Greek, and Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, supported him with means for study. He was elected one of the taxers of the university, and obtained a prebend and a readership in divinity at Durham. On the grounds of his holding a prebend, he was deprived of his fellowship in 1579, but was reinstated in 1581, at the instance of Lord Burghley, the chancellor, who, moved by the representations of Richard Barnes, the Bishop of Durham, the Earl of Huntingdon, and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, overcame the opposition of John Hatcher, the vice-chancellor, and Edward Hawford, master of Christ's. He resigned the office of taxer, and does not seem to have returned to the university.

Broughton came to London, where he spent time in intense study, and distinguished himself as a preacher of puritan sentiments in theology. He is said to have predicted, in one of his sermons (1588), the scattering of the Spanish Armada. He found friends among the citizens, especially in the family of the Cottons, with whom he lived, and whom he taught Hebrew. In 1588 appeared his first work, A Concent of Scripture, dedicated to the queen. John Speed, the historian, saw the book through the press. The Concent was attacked in public prelections by John Rainolds at Oxford, and Edward Lively at Cambridge. Broughton appealed to the queen (to whom he presented a special copy of the book on 17 November 1589), to John Whitgift, and to John Aylmer, bishop of London, asking to have the points in dispute between Rainolds and himself determined by the authority of the archbishops and the two universities. He began weekly lectures in his own defence to an audience of between 80 and 100 scholars, using the Concent as a text-book. The privy council allowed him to deliver his lectures (as Chevallier had done before) at the east end of St Paul's Cathedral, until some of the bishops complained of his audiences as conventicles. He then moved his lecture to a room in Cheapside, and then to Mark Lane, and elsewhere. Insecurity based on fear of the high commission made him anxious to leave the country.

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