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 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]
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
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]