Walter Haddon

Walter Haddon LL.D. (1515–1572) was an English civil lawyer, much involved in church and university affairs under Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth I. He was a Cambridge humanist and reformer, and was highly reputed in his time as a Latinist: his controversial exchange with the Portuguese historian Jerónimo Osório attracted international attention based largely on the scholarly reputations of the protagonists.

Walter Haddon was the son of William Haddon and Dorothy Young, the daughter of John Young of Croome d'Abitot, Worcestershire. He was the maternal half-brother of Francis Saunders and the brother of James Haddon. Haddon was educated at Eton College under Richard Cox, and in 1533 he was elected from Eton to King's College, Cambridge. He declined an invitation to Cardinal College, at Oxford, and proceeded B.A. at Cambridge in 1537. He was one of the scholars who about this period attended the Greek lectures read in the university by Thomas Smith. He commenced M.A. in 1541, and read lectures on civil law for two or three years.

He was created doctor of laws at Cambridge in 1549, and served the office of vice-chancellor in 1549–1550. A reformer in religion, with Matthew Parker, then master of Benet College, he acted as an executor of his friend Martin Bucer, and both delivered orations at his funeral in March 1551. He was appointed regius professor of civil law, in accordance with a petition from the university, drawn up by his friend Roger Ascham. Haddon and John Cheke were chiefly responsible for the reform of the ecclesiastical laws, prepared under Thomas Cranmer's superintendence, and with the advice of Peter Martyr, in accordance with an Act of Parliament of 1549. The Act directed that the scheme should be completed by 1552, but the work was not finished within the specified time. A bill introduced into the parliament of 1552 for the renewal of the commission was not carried, and Edward's death put an end to the scheme, but Haddon and Cheke's Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum appeared in 1571.

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