John Worthington (academic)

He was born in Manchester, and educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.[4] At Emmanuel he was taught by Joseph Mead; he described Mead's teaching methods, and later edited his works.[5] Another teacher was Benjamin Whichcote.[6]

He was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, from 1650 to 1660, and Vice-Chancellor in 1657.[7] At the English Restoration he was replaced by Richard Sterne, apparently willingly.[8] Subsequently he held various church positions, being lecturer at St Benet Fink in London until burnt out in the Great Fire of London in 1666. He then was given a living at Ingoldsby. At the end of his life he was a lecturer in Hackney.[9]

He died in London.

He married Mary Whichcote, in 1657. She was niece to both Benjamin Whichcote[10][11][12] and Elizabeth Foxcroft (née Whichcote), wife of Ezechiel Foxcroft.[13]^:197

Worthington was an active correspondent of Samuel Hartlib, the "intelligencer", in the period 1655 to 1662.[6] At Worthington's request, Hartlib's close collaborator John Dury searched in the Netherlands for the lost papers of Henry Ainsworth.[14] He shared with Hartlib and Dury (and both Henry More and John Covel) an interest in the Karaites.[15] He was also involved in the connections between Hartlib and Dury with Adam Boreel in Amsterdam, including the Boreel project to translate the Hebrew Mishnah into Latin and Spanish.[16]

After Hartlib's death, Worthington took on the task of organising his archive of correspondence, which had been bought by William Brereton, 2nd Baron Brereton.[17] After a period of nearly 300 years, the bundles into which he sorted it were rediscovered, and his system for the archive persists.[18]

• The Christian's Pattern: a translation of the De Imitatione of Thomas à Kempis (1654)
• John Smith, Selected Discourses (London, 1660) editor
• Life of Joseph Mede with third edition of Mede's Works (1672)
• The Great Duty of Self-Resignation to the Divine Will (1675)
• The Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington, 2 vols. (1847–86, Chetham Society), editor James Crossley

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Mullinger, James Bass (1900). "Worthington, John". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 63. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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