John Joscelyn

John Joscelyn
A page from the D manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was annotated by Joscelyn
Born	1529 probably High Roding, Essex
Died	28 December 1603 probably High Roding, Essex
Resting place	All Saint's Church, High Roding
Occupation	Clergyman, secretary
Nationality	English
Education	Master of Arts
Alma mater	Queens' College, Cambridge
Period	Elizabethan England
Genre	historian, antiquarian

John Joscelyn or John Joscelin (1529–1603) was an English clergyman and antiquarian as well as secretary to Matthew Parker, an Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Joscelyn was involved in Parker's attempts to secure and publish medieval manuscripts on church history, and was one of the first scholars of the Old English language. He also studied the early law codes of England. His Old English dictionary, although not published during his lifetime, contributed greatly to the study of that language. Many of his manuscripts and papers eventually became part of the collections of Cambridge University, Oxford University, or the British Library.

Joscelyn was born in 1529, and was the son of Sir Thomas Joscelin and Dorothy Gate. John was their third son to survive childhood, and was probably born on his father's estate at High Roding, Essex. He attended Queens' College at Cambridge beginning in 1545, attaining a Bachelor of Arts in 1549. In the school year 1550–1551 he taught Latin at Queens' College, and the following school year he taught Greek. At the end of 1552, he was awarded a Master of Arts. In 1555, during Queen Mary I's reign, Joscelyn subscribed to the required church doctrine, and was once more a teacher of Greek during the school year 1556–1557. However, in 1557 he resigned from his fellowship at Queens' College.

In 1559 shortly after he was appointed as archbishop, Matthew Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury, named Joscelyn to a chaplainacy, and also as his Latin language secretary. The following year Parker gave Joscelyn a prebend in Hereford, held until 1577. Unusually for the time, besides Greek and Latin Joscelyn was a scholar of Hebrew. From Parker's interest in the history of early Christianity, and to discover more information about the growth of papal power in the Middle Ages, Joscelyn also began to study Old English (a topic of interest to Parker), and helped the archbishop in his studies of the English pre-Norman Conquest church. Joscelyn helped discover lost manuscripts, obtained them for Parker, and prepared them for publication. Joscelyn also acquired manuscripts for himself, 40 of which were written in Old English.