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Edward Simpson

Tottenham, 1578 - 1651, Eastling

BiographyLC authority record no.n85215748
LC Heading: Simpson, Edward, 1578-1651

Biography:

Simpson, Edward (1578–1651), Church of England clergyman and author, was born at High Cross, Tottenham, Middlesex, on 9 May 1578, the son of Edward Simpson, rector of the parish. He was educated first at Westminster School and then at Trinity College, Cambridge. Admitted in 1596, he was a scholar of the college in 1597 and elected a fellow in 1601, graduating BA the same year and proceeding MA in 1604, BD in 1611, and DD in 1624. Between 1611 and 1614 he acted as chaplain to Sir Moyle Finch of Eastwell, Kent, known for his puritanism and militant anti-popery, and on 2 January 1617 was presented by Finch's widow, Lady Elizabeth Finch, to the rectory of Eastling, valued at £129 per annum; he did not resign his fellowship until 1628. On 4 August that year Simpson was collated to the prebend of Corringham in the diocese of Lincoln, and installed by proxy on 13 August. He was married twice, first to a daughter of Sir Richard Barham; of his second wife, nothing at all is known.

In 1636 Simpson issued a chronology of the Christian religion, Chronicon historiam catholicam complectens, which appeared in expanded form in 1652. The Leiden edition of 1729 contains a miniature portrait of Simpson, with a white beard and skull-cap, the miniature being born aloft by cherubim and seraphim in a larger scene depicting the banishment of superstition, and the progress of light and learning, during the days of the Christian emperors of Rome. Simpson's biographer Thomas Jones, whose account of his life prefaced the 1652 edition, credited him with other publications, but there is no evidence for this.

Simpson remained at Eastling through the 1640s but at some point after September 1643 replaced the intruded minister, one S. Jemmatt, at Pluckley in the same county. He had resigned by 1649, when he was succeeded by Israel Tonge. Simpson died in 1651 and was buried on 9 June at Eastling. Administration of his estate was granted on 27 June to the guardian of his only child, Jane, who subsequently married Tonge.

Stephen Wright
Stephen Wright, ‘Simpson, Edward (1578–1651)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/25580, accessed 14 March 2016]

Person TypeIndividual

Last Updated8/7/24

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