Wheelocke, Abraham

, a learned orientalist, and first professor of the Arabic and Saxon tongues in the University of Cambridge, was born at Loppington, in Shropshire (of which county likewise was his patron and founder, | sir Thomas Adorns) and admitted of Trinity cpllege, Cambridge. There he became B. A. in 1614, M. A. in 1618, and %vas admitted fellow of Clare-hall the year following. In- 1623 he was appointed one of the university preachers, and in 1625 commenced bachelor of divinity. In 1622 he was: made minister of St. Sepulchre’s church, which he held until 1642. About the same time (1622) he read the Arabio lecture ipr Mr. (afterwards sir Thomas) Adams, though it &as not then settled, but he received for the same forty pounds a year, remitted to him by quarterly payments. Hte read also the Saxon lecture for sir Henry Spelman, for which he received an annual stipend, not settled, but voluntary: together with this, sir Henry gave Mr. Wheelocke the vicarage of Middleton, in Norfolk, worth fifty pounds a year, which was intended to be augmented out of the appropriate parsonage, and to be the ground of his intended foundation, if sir Henry’s death, which happened in 1641, had not prevented it. Multiplicity of literary business, and severity of application, probably shortened Wheelocke’s clays:' for he died at London whilst he was printing his Persian gospels, in the month of September 1653. He is said to have been sixty years old. He was buried at St. Botolph’s Aldersgate. His funeral sermon was preached and published by William Sclater, D. D. 1654, 4to. Wheelocke’s was a great loss to the gentlemen concerned in the celebrated Polyglot, who knew how to value his services. His province was to have corrected the Syriac and Arabic at the press.

His “Quatuor Evangelia Dom. nost. Jesu Christi, Persice,” appeared at Lond. 1652, fol. For this work, which was intended to have been introduced into Persia, as the foundation of a missionary scheme, the celebrated Pocock lent him a ms. so good, that Wheelocke, in a letter to him, professes, that had it not been for his fear of oppressing his amanuensis, he would have begun his work again. He also published in 1644, fol. Bede’s “Historise Ecclesiasticse gentis Anglorum libri quinque,” &c. and with it “Larabardi Archaionomia, sive de priscis Anglorum legibus,” with a learned preface. 1

1

T* elk’s Life of Pococke, p. 50. Lloyd’s Memoiri, fol. Fuller’s Worthies. Bavksdale’s Memorials, Decade the third.--Usher’s Life and Letters.