- 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.
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.
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.
He married Mary Whichcote, in 1657. She was niece to both Benjamin Whichcote[9][10][11] and Elizabeth Foxcroft (née Whichcote), wife of Ezechiel Foxcroft.[12]: 197
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.[13] He shared with Hartlib and Dury (and both Henry More and John Covel) an interest in the Karaites.[14] 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.[15]
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.[16] After a period of nearly 300 years, the bundles into which he sorted it were rediscovered, and his system for the archive persists.[17]
