Worthington, Dr. John

, an excellent divine of the church of England, was born at Manchester, in the beginning of Feb. 1617-18, and was the son of Roger Worthington, a person of “chief note and esteem” in that town. His mother was Mary, the daughter of Christopher Whichcote, esq. and niece to sir Jeremy Whichcote, bart. He was educated at Emanuel college, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow, was created B.D. in 1646, and D. D. in 1655. He was afterwards chosen master of Jesus college, vacant by the ejectment of Dr. Richard Sterne, afterwards archbishop of York, but was with some difficulty prevailed upon to submit to the choice and request of the fellows, his inclination being to a more private and retired life; and soon after the restoration be resigned that mastership to Dr. Sterne. In the mean time he was successively rector of Horton in Buckinghamshire, Gravely and Fen Ditton in the county of Cambridge, Barking, with Needham, in the county of Suffolk, and Ingoldsby in Lincolnshire. During the years 1660 and 1661 he cultivated a frequent correspondence by letters with that great promoter of all useful learning, Mr. Samuel Hartlib; four and twenty of Dr. Worthington’s being published at the end of his Miscellanies; and several others by bishop Kennet in his Register and Chronicle. In 1663, he was collated to the sinecure rectory of Moulton All Saints, in Norfolk. He entered upon the cure of St. Bene’t Fink in June 1664, under Dr. George Evans, canon of Windsor, who held a lease from that college of the rectory; and he continued to preach there during the plague-year 1665, coming thither weekly from Hackney, where he had placed his family: and from February 18, 1665-6, till the fire in September, he preached the lecture of that church, upon the death of the former lecturer. Soon after that calamity, he was presented by Dr. Henry More> of Christ’s college in Cambridge, to the living of Ingoldsby, before mentioned, and to the prebend of Asgarby in the church of Lincoln, procured him by archbishop Sheldon, who had a great esteem for him. | From Ingoldsby he removed to Hackney, being chosen lecturer of that church with a subscription commencing from Lady-day 1670; and, the church of St. Bene’t Fink being then rebuilding, he made suit to the church of Windsor to have his lease of the cure renewed to him, being recommended by the archbishop to Dr. Ryves, dean of that church. This was granted him; but some difficulties arising about the form of the lease, with regard to the parsonage house, agreed to be rebuilt, he did not live to execute it, dying at Hackney Nov. 26, 1671. He was interred in the church there.

His funeral-sermon was preached by Dr. Tillotson at Hackney, on the 30th of Nov. 1671, on John ix. 4. printed, as it was preached on another occasion, in the third volume of his posthumous sermons, published by Dr. Barker. But the character of Dr.Worthington, which was the conclusion of that sermon, and omitted in that edition, is inserted in the preface to that learned man’s “Miscellanies,” published at London in 1704 in 8vo, by Dr. Fowler, bishop of Gloucester, and prefixed to Dr. Worthington’s “Select Discourses,” revised and published by his son John Worthington, M.A. at London, 1725, in 8vo. 1

1

Barwick’s Life. Birch’s Life of Tillotson. —Gent. Mag, vols. XLII. XLllF. and XLVL