- Nathanael Carpenter
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Nathanael Carpenter (1589–ca.1628) was an English author, philosopher, and geographer.[1]
Life
He was son of John Carpenter, rector of Northleigh, Devon, and was born there on February 7, 1589. He matriculated at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, on June 7, 1605; but was elected, on a recommendatory letter of James I, a Devonshire fellow of Exeter College on June 30, 1607. A second Devonshire candidate, Michael Jermyn, obtained an equal number of votes; the vice-chancellor gave his decision in favour of Carpenter. The dates of Carpenter's degrees were: Bachelor of Arts July 5, 1610, Master of Arts 1618, Bachelor of Divinity May 11, 1620, Doctor of Divinity 1626. During his residence at Oxford he is said to have become a noted philosopher, poet, mathematician, and geographer. One of his pupils at the university was Sir William Morice, secretary of state 1660–8, a politician with religious views similar to his tutor's Calvinism.
Matthew Sutcliffe nominated him a member of Chelsea College, and Archbishop James Ussher brought him to Ireland, where he was appointed schoolmaster of the king's wards in Dublin (wards being minors of property whose parents were Roman Catholics). Carpenter's death is said to have occurred at Dublin in the beginning of 1628, and his funeral sermon was preached by Robert Ussher.
Works
His earliest work Philosophia libera triplici exercitationum decade proposita was an attack on the Aristotelian system of philosophy, and appeared at Frankfurt in 1621, under the pseudonym "N. C. Cosmopolitanus." Later editions were issued under his name in 1622, 1636, and 1675. His treatise of Geography Delineated Forth in Two Books was published in 1625, and republished in 1685. Three sermons entitled Achitophel, or the Picture of a Wicked Politician, preached to the University of Oxford and dedicated to James Ussher, are stated to have appeared in 1627, 1628, 1629, 1638, 1638, and 1642. The first edition was called in, and the passages against Arminianism were removed. After his death there appeared (1633 and 1640) a sermon, Chorazin and Bethsaida's Woe, which he had preached at St. Mary's, Oxford. The dedication by N. H. was to Thomas Winniffe, and asserts that but for a kinsman the manuscript might have been lost on the Dutch shores, as Carpenter's works on optics were in the Irish Sea.
References
- ^ Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee (eds.): The Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol. III (Brown – Chaloner), pp. 1070–1071.
- Madan, Falconer The Early Oxford Press: A Bibliography of Printing and Publishing at Oxford, 1468–1640
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Carpenter, Nathanael". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
Categories:- 1580s births
- 1628 deaths
- English writers
- 16th-century English people
- 17th-century English people
- 17th-century writers
- People of the Tudor period
- People of the Stuart period
- Geographers
- English philosophers
- People from Devon
- Fellows of Exeter College, Oxford
- Alumni of St Mary Hall, Oxford
- 17th-century philosophers
- 17th-century poets
- English mathematicians
- 17th-century mathematicians
- English writer stubs
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