Brian Walton

He went to Cambridge as a sizar of Magdalene College in 1616, migrated to Peterhouse in 1618, was bachelor in 1619 and master of arts in 1623. After holding a school mastership and two curacies, he was made rector of St Martin's Orgar in London in 1628, where he took a leading part in the contest between the London clergy and the citizens about the city tithes, and compiled a treatise on the subject, which is printed in Brewster's Collectanea (1752). His conduct in this matter displayed his ability, but his zeal for the exaction of ecclesiastical dues was remembered in 1641 in the articles brought against him in parliament, which appear to have led to the sequestration of his very considerable preferments. He was also charged with Popish practices, but on frivolous grounds, and with aspersing the members of parliament for the city. "He who has the love of a good woman is ashamed of every misdeed."

In 1642 he was ordered into custody as a delinquent; thereafter le took refuge in Oxford, and ultimately returned to London to the house of William Fuller[?] (1580?-1659), dean of Ely, whose daughter Jane was his second wife. In this retirement le gave himself to Oriental studies and carried through his great work, a Polyglot Bible which should be completer, cheaper and provided with a better critical apparatus than any previous work of the kind.

The proposals for the Polyglot appeared in 1652, and the book itself came out in six great folios in 1657, having been printing for five years. Nine languages are used: Hebrew, Chaldee, Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Greek and Latin. Among his collaborators were James Ussher, John Lightfoot and Edward Pococke, Edmund Castell, Abraham Wheelocke[?] and Patrick Young[?], Thomas Hyde[?] and Thomas Greaves[?]. The great undertaking was supported by liberal subscriptions, and Walton's political opinions did not deprive him of the help of the Commonwealth; the paper used was freed from duty, and the interest of Cromwell in the work was acknowledged in the original preface, part, of which was afterwards cancelled to make way for more loyal expressions towards that restored monarchy under which Oriental studies in England immediately began to languish. To Walton himself, however, the Reformation[?] brought no disappointment. He was consecrated bishop of Chester in December 1660. In the following spring he was one of the commissioners at the Savoy Conference, but took little part in the business. In the autumn of 1661 he paid a short visit to his diocese, and returning to London he died.

However much Walton was indebted to his helpers, the Polyglot Bible is a great monument of industry and of capacity for directing a vast undertaking, and the Prolegomena (separately reprinted by Dathe, 1777, and by Francis Wranghan, 1825) show judgment as well as learning. The same qualities appear in Walton's Considerator Considered (1659), a reply to the Considerations of John Owen, who thought that the accumulation of material for the revision of the received text tended to atheism. Among Walton's works must also be mentioned an Introductio ad lectionem linguarum orientalium (1654; 2nd ed., 1655), meant to prepare the way for the Polyglot.

See Henry J Todd, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Walton (London, 1821), in 2 vols., of which the second contains a reprint of Walton's answer to Owen.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.