Walton, BRIAN, editor of the great London Polyglott Bible, was born at Seymour in Yorkshire in 1600, was educated at Magdalene College and Peterhouse, Cambridge, and became in 1626 rector of St Martin's Orgar in London, to which was added the rectory of Sandon in Essex in 1636. In 1641 he was sequestered, and he thereupon found refuge in Oxford, afterwards in his second father-in-law's house in London, where he devoted himself to his great work, which came out by a subscription of ten pounds a set in six folio volumes (1654-57). He had been aided by Usher, Lightfoot, Pocock, and many other scholars, and Cromwell himself favoured the scheme, as acknowledged in the original preface. Walton was consecrated Bishop of Chester in December 1660, and died in London, 29th November 1661. Some portions of Walton's Polyglott are printed in seven languages, all open at one view. No one book is given in nine languages, but nine are used in the course of the work, Hebrew, Chaldee, Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Greek, and Latin. Dr Edmund Castell's Lexicon Heptaglotton (2 vols. folio, 1669), giving lexicons and grammars of the languages contained, is its necessary complement. Other works were his Introductio ad Leet. Orient. (1654) and Considerator Considered (1660), an answer to Owen, who found things prejudicial to the faith in the Prolegomena to the Polyglott and in the large number of various readings admitted.
See the Life by H. J. Todd (2 vols. 1821), the second volume containing a reprint of the answer to Owen.