Between Scholarship and Church Politics describes the life and career of John Prideaux, rector of Exeter College, Oxford, 1612DS1642, regius professor of divinity, 1615DS1642, and bishop of Worcester, 1641DS1646. Prideaux was the leading representative of the 'old guard' in the Church of England DL Calvinist believers in the doctrines of grace and predestination, who set themselves against the growing power of the Arminian modernisers within the Church, largely the followers of Archbishop Laud. But Prideaux was also an outstandingly successful head of his Oxford college and made it a home for foreign scholars and students. Devoted to teaching, the writer of numerous books for undergraduates and theology students, and thoroughly involved in his College>'s everyday affairs, he was a model rector. In this study, John Maddicott addresses at length both Prideaux>'s political and ecclesiastical career and his role in the College, while also paying particular attention to his personality, his family life (he was twice married and had nine children), and to his wide circle of relatives, colleagues, and allies. Born the son of a Devonshire yeoman and brought up on a farm on the edge of Dartmoor, he rose to occupy some of the highest offices in the University of Oxford and in the church, a result of his intellectual power, his ambition, his learning and scholarship, and his capacity for hard work. Between Scholarship and Church Politics is as much a study of character as a contribution to the political and church history of early Stuart England.
List of Illustrations Abbreviations Notes Part 1. Events, 1578-1624 1: Climbing the Ladder, 1578-1612 1. Home, 1578-96 2. Rector Holland's Exeter 3. Undergraduate, graduate, fellow 1596-1610 4. The road to the rectorship, 1610-12 2: Halcyon Years, 1612-24 1. Defender of the Faith 2. The Synod of Dort and the Spanish Match 3. Foreign students, scholars, and visitors 4. William Lord Petre v. Exeter College 5. Responsibilities and rewards Part 2. Topics 3: Rector Prideaux and his College 1. Reputation and requirements 2. Undergraduates and graduates: Numbers 3. Undergraduates: Hierarchies and status 4. Fellows and tutors 5. Wealth 6. A 'hands-on' rector 4: The Rebuilding of Exeter College 1. Intentions 2. The rector's lodgings 3. Peryam's Mansions 4. Sir John Acland's hall 5. Negotiations with the city of Exeter 6. Hakewill's chapel 7. Expansion northwards 8. Achievements and missed opportunities 5: Prideaux's Circle 1. Family 2. Colleagues 3. Allies 6: Prideaux the Scholar 1. Reputation 2. The substance of Prideaux's learning 3. The context of Prideaux's learning 4. Reason and theology 5. The instruction of the young 6. Prideaux's books Part 3. Events, 1624-50 7: The Decline of the Calvinist Cause, 1624-30 1. Background to change 2. The affair of Richard Montagu 3. Prideaux embattled, 1627-30 8: Rector Prideaux and Chancellor Laud, 1630-6 1. The new broom 2. Conflicts: With Laud and the College 3. Conflicts: With Heylyn 4. Relations with the Continental churches 5. Prideaux and the Socinians 6. Laud's apogee: The new statutes and the king's visit 9: From Laud's Apogee to Laud's Decline, 1636-40 1. A recusant puritan? 2. The Chillingworth affair 3. University and College 4. The affairs of the nation 5. Prideaux and Laud: A retrospect 10: Prideaux Redivivus and the Road to Civil War, 1640-2 1. The early stages of the Long Parliament, 1640-1 2. Bishop and vice-chancellor, 1641-2 11: In Office and in Retirement, 1642-50 1. Bishop of Worcester 2. Retirement: Family 3. Retirement: Books and writings 4. Last things 12: John Prideaux: Life and Afterlife Bibliography Index
John Maddicott took his BA from Worcester College, Oxford, in 1964 and was elected to a Fellowship and Tutorship in Modern History at Exeter College in 1969, a position which he held until his retirement in 2005. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996 and gave the Ford Lectures at Oxford in 2004, subsequently published in 2010. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of South Carolina in 1982. Maddicott has written extensively on Anglo-Saxon history and on English social and political history, mainly of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Reviews for Between Scholarship and Church Politics: The Lives of John Prideaux, 1578-1650
This is a history of a quintessentially 'college man' written by another 'college man' of the same college, and as such is a clever, insightful, inside job. * Andrew Foster, University of Kent, Ecclesiology Today, no 62 * Maddicott provides a richly researched, full-orbed account of John Prideaux that contextualises this important but understudied figure within the university and college milieu that defined his life and work. * Matthew C. Bingham, Journal of Ecclesiastical History * Maddicott ends this excellent biography of John Prideaux with some reasons why the subject has not been tackled before. * Mary Morrissey, Journal of Theological Studies * Carefully conceived and expertly written, the work is also simply a fine read ... a sympathetic yet even-handed character study in educational leadership. * Samuel Fornecker, Renaissance Quarterly * This splendid biography focuses on Prideaux's character as well as his public life ...The complexities of John Prideaux, and the challenges he faced, are laid out impressively in this readable and persuasive biography. * Kenneth Fincham, Oxoniensia * John Maddicott offers not only a splendid portrait of one of the seventeenth-century's ablest theologians and university administrators but also a close look at an Oxford college caught in the political and ecclesiastical turmoil that tore Europe part in the first half of the seventeenth century. Together, these strands combine seamlessly to produce a robust intellectual biography and an in-depth study of administrative and political change in early modern universities. * Pranav Kumar Jain, Reformation * This excellent biography ... * Mary Morrissey, Journal of Theological Studies *
