William Whittingham

William Whittingham (c. 1524–1579) was an English Biblical scholar, Bible translator, and Marian exile. A well-connected friend of English reformers and publisher of the Geneva Bible, he became an English Dean, preacher before Queen Elizabeth, and a Protestant, Reformed and Anglican reformer.

Educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, he became a Protestant and Reformed Churchman; as such, it was necessary to flee England when Mary I ascended the throne and initiated her policies of hostility and persecutions against Reformed Churchmen.

By 1554, Whittingham made his way to Frankfurt, Germany, where he joined a group of Protestant exiles from Mary's reign. There, he met John Knox and became a supporter of Reformed Theology, a force that would inform and shape later Elizabethan divines. (This would later be pushed back by Laudian forces of anti-Calvinism in the 17th century.) He also married the sister of John Calvin. He took over Knox's role as established, ordained and recognized minister to the English congregation of exiles in Geneva. In Geneva, he started the work for which he is best remembered, a Bible translation that came to be known as the Geneva Bible.

In 1560, Whittingham returned to England, and was made dean of Durham in 1563, an office he held at his death in 1579--a Protestant, Reformed, Genevan, Prayer Book and Anglican divine.

Born at Chester about 1524, he was son of William Whittingham, by his wife, a daughter of Haughton of Hoghton Tower, Lancashire. In 1540, at the age of sixteen, he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating B.A. and being elected fellow of All Souls' College in 1545. In 1547 he became senior student of Christ Church, Oxford earning the M.A. on 5 Feb. 1547–8. On 17 May 1550, he was granted leave to travel for three years to study languages and civil law. He went to France, where he spent his time chiefly at the University of Orleans, but he also visited Lyon and studied at Paris, where his services as interpreter were used by the English ambassador, Sir John Mason or Sir William Pickering.

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