Strype

Strype, JOHN, a voluminous ecclesiastical historian, was born in London, November 1, 1643, the same year as Burnet. He was educated at St Paul's School, whence he passed first to Jesus College, then to Catharine Hall, Cambridge. He was presented in 1669 to the perpetual curacy of Theydon-Bois in Essex, which he resigned a little later to become minister of Low Leyton in the same county. Later he received the sinecure of Tarring in Sussex and the lectureship of Hackney, which he resigned in 1724. He died at Hackney, December 11, 1737, aged ninety-four. His works fill thirteen folio volumes (27 vols., Clar. Press ed., 1821-43). The most important are Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer (1694); Life of Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State to Edward VI. and Elizabeth (1698); Lives of Bishop Aylmer (1701), Sir John Cheke (1705), Archbishop Grindal (1710), Archbishop Parker (1711), and Archbishop Whitgift (1718); Annals of the Reformation (vol. i. 1709, vol. ii. 1723, vol. iii. 1728, and vol. iv. 1731); Ecclesiastical Memorials, relating to religion and the Church of England under Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Mary (3 vols. 1721). This last is his best work, forming, with Burnet's more readable History of the Reformation, a consecutive and full account of the reformed Anglican Church. Strype also published an enlarged edition of Stow's Survey of London (2 vols. 1720), with several sermons and pamphlets. As a writer he is heavy and unskilful in arrangement, but laborious and honest, and his transcriptions of the ancient papers he published may be trusted. A simple-minded but sincere man, he has left to posterity a series of works of the very greatest value despite their prolixity, irrelevant details, and tiresome repetitions.