John Worthington (1618–1671) was an English academic. He was closely associated with the Cambridge Platonists. ^{[1] [2]} He did not in fact publish in the field of philosophy, and is now known mainly as a well-connected diarist.

Life

He was born in Manchester, and educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. ^[3] At Emmanuel he was taught by Joseph Mead; he described Mead's teaching methods, and later edited his works. ^[4] Another teacher was Benjamin Whichcote. ^[5]

He was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, from 1650 to 1660, and Vice-Chancellor in 1657. ^[6] At the English Restoration he was replaced by Richard Sterne, apparently willingly. ^[7] 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. ^[8]

He died in London in 1671 and he left his books on Jakob Boehme and Hendrik Niclaes to the philosopher Elizabeth Foxcroft and to her son the alchemist Ezechial Foxcroft. ^[9]

Family

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

Hartlib correspondence

Worthington was an active correspondent of Samuel Hartlib, the "intelligencer", in the period 1655 to 1662. ^[5] 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]

Works

• 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

Notes

References

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. Vol. 63. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

External links

• CCED page^{[ permanent dead link]}