William Chappell (bishop)

William Chappell (Chappel, Chapple) (10 December 1582 – 14 May 1649) was an English scholar and clergyman. He became Church of Ireland bishop of Cork and Ross.

He was born in Mansfield. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became Fellow in 1607. His pupils at Christ's included John Lightfoot, Henry More, John Shawe, and John Milton.

In Milton's case, friction with Chappell may have caused him to leave the college temporarily (a rustication) in 1626. Another explanation is that plague caused an absence, and that Milton's Elegy I has been over-interpreted. He shared Chappell as tutor with Edward King – his Lycidas – and it is thought that Damoetas in the poem refers to Chappell (or possibly Joseph Mede).

On his return, Milton was taught by Nathaniel Tovey. Despite the personal problems, Milton may have learned from Chappell, who was a theoretician of preaching; this aspect of Milton is discussed in Jameela Lares, Milton and the Preaching Arts (2001). She suggests Andreas Hyperius, and his De formandis concionibus sacris (1553), as influential on Chappell and other writers on preaching and sermon types. Chappell was himself a pupil of William Ames, who left Christ's in 1610. Like Ames, he was a Ramist, though he differed from the Calvinist Ames on doctrine. Lares argues for Chappell as the link to the older Christ's preaching tradition, Milton connected back to William Perkins.

In any case, Chappell had a reputation then for strictness, and for being a hard man in a Latin disputation. Stories gathered about him: John Aubrey, an unreliable source, suggested Chappell had beaten Milton. One of Chappell's disputation opponents was supposedly James I, crushed in Oxford; another (William Roberts in 1615, later bishop of Bangor) allegedly had fainted. The anonymous The Whole Duty of Man (1658) has been attributed to Chappell, though modern opinion suggests Richard Allestree.

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