- Richard Holdsworth
Richard Holdsworth (Oldsworth) (1590-1649) was an English academic theologian, and Master of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1637 to 1643. Although Emmanuel was aPuritan stronghold, Holdsworth, who in religion agreed [Christopher Hill, "Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution" (1665), p. 5, p. 56.] , in the political sphere resisted Parliamentary interference, and showed Royalist sympathies.Life
He was a scholar of
St. John's College, Cambridge , in 1607. He graduated BA in 1610, and became a Fellow in 1613. ["Concise Dictionary of National Biography"]He was chaplain to
Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet . [Hill, Intellectual Origins, p. 215.] He was rector ofSt Peter-le-Poor , London in 1624. [CDNB]He was in 1629 the first
Gresham College divinity lecturer appointed from the Puritan camp [Hill, Intellectual Origins, p. 56.] ; he held the position until 1637. A London reputation ["The most celebrated preacher of Caroline London" [http://assets.cambridge.org/052166/182X/sample/052166182XWS.pdf PDF] ] brought him the presidency ofSion College . He became Archdeacon of Huntingdon.He was a member of the
Westminster Assembly [ [http://www.apuritansmind.com/WCF/AssemblyMembers.htm A List of the Members of the Westminster Assembly ] ] . He wasVice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge , for two years, andLady Margaret's Professor of Divinity , from 1643. He lost his position as Master of Emmanuel, because of expressed royalist opinions [ [http://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/about/masters/?id=5 Emmanuel College - About Emmanuel - College Masters ] ] ; and was briefly imprisoned by Parliament.He was appointed Dean of Worcester by the King, in 1647 ["Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy", p. 881.] . It is also claimed that the King wanted to appoint him
Bishop of Bristol ; this is mentioned byThomas Fuller ["The history of the University of Cambridge, and of Waltham abbey"] . Given the wartime conditions, these appointments could have been taken up only with difficulty.Educational views
He is said to have been a modernizer in education, in the line of
Francis Bacon andComenius . [Hill, Intellectual Origins, p. 100.] , and a proponent of unadorned prose [Hill, Intellectual Origins, p. 130.] . His students at St. John's includedSimonds D'Ewes , whom he instructed by means of a system of note-taking [ [http://www.law.buffalo.edu/baldycenter/pdfs/Regional07Fernandez1.pdf PDF] , note 118, p. 37.] .He provided
John Wallis with an introduction toWilliam Oughtred , sttering Wallis towards mathematics (Wallis graduated BA at Emmanuel as Holdsworth arrived).He was also a bibliophile who amassed a private collection of 10,000 books, bequeathed to the
Cambridge University Library . [ [http://www.bibsocamer.org/BibSite/Pearson/Pearson.pdf PDF] , p. 48.] It arrived there in 1664, after a long legal limbo caused by testamentary conditions. It is said to have been the largest private collection of the time in England [ [http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/History/3.htm Cambridge University Library: A historical sketch ] ] .The "Directions for a Student in the Universite" [Reproduced in Harris Francis Fletcher, "The Intellectual Development of John Milton", vol. 2, The Cambridge University Period, 1625-32 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1961), Appendix II, 623-64.] has been attributed to him. The attribution is questioned by Hill [Intellectual Origins, pp. 307-9.] as not certain. This work is a scheme of a four-year classical education [
Mordecai Feingold , "The Humanities" p. 258, in "The History of the University of Oxford" IV, Seventeenth-Century Oxford (1997) edited by Nicholas Tyacke.] .Notes
Further reading
*John A. Trentman, "The Authorship of "Directions for a Student in the Universitie"," "Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society", vol. 7, no. 2, 1978, pp. 170-183.
*Brent L. Nelson, "The Social Context of Rhetoric, 1500-1660," "The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 281: British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500-1660, Second Series", Detroit: Gale, 2003, pp. 355-377.External links
* [http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/early_books/pix/provenance/houldsworth/holdsworth.htm]
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