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 became domestic chaplain to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. On 21 June 1572 he was collated to the rectory of St. Edmund's, Lombard Street. In addition he was admitted to the vicarage of Christ Church, Newgate, on 25 Jan. 1577, but resigned this preferment in the following year. Fuller describes him as a ‘profitable pastor.’ His puritan principles are assumed by Brook, without much direct evidence. He died in 1593, his successor at St. Edmund's being instituted on 2 June in that year.

He married Margaret Pigott, of a Hertfordshire family, and left a son Thomas [see ].

[Ashe's Narrative, appended to Gray Hayres crowned with Grace, 1655; Fuller's Worthies, 1662, ‘Shropshire,’ p. 3; Clarke's Lives of Thirty-two English Divines, 1677, pp. 248 sq.; Biog. Brit. 1747, iv. 2155 sq.; Brook's Lives of the Puritans, 1813, ii. 68; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. 1861, ii. 164 sq.] 

GATAKER, THOMAS (1574–1654), puritan divine and critic, was born on 4 Sept. 1574, in the rectory house of St. Edmund's, Lombard Street. His father was Thomas Gatacre [q. v.]; the son changed the spelling of his name ‘to prevent miscalling’. He was a bookish boy, and subject from childhood to excruciating headaches. In his sixteenth year (1590) he was entered at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he gained a scholarship and graduated M.A. His zest for Greek learning is shown by his attendance at the extra lecture given by John Bois [q. v.] at four o'clock in the morning ‘in his bed.’ With a fellow-student, Richard Stock, he contracted a close friendship, which riveted his attachment to the puritan principles inculcated by his tutors, Henry Alvey, B.D., and Abdias Ashton. In 1596 Gataker was nominated one of the first fellows of Sidney Sussex College. While the building was in progress he became tutor and chaplain in the household of William Ayloffe of Braxted, Essex, teaching Hebrew to Ayloffe, and preparing his eldest son for the university. From John Stern, suffragan bishop of Colchester, a near relative of Ayloffe's wife, he received ordination. Coming into residence at Sidney Sussex in 1599, the building being still unfinished, he gave accommodation in his rooms to another fellow, William Bradshaw (1571–1618) [q. v.], an act of courtesy which led to a long friendship. Gataker was successful in training students, but his career as a college tutor was short. A scheme was set on foot by Ashton and the famous William Bedell [q. v.] for providing preachers in neglected parishes round Cambridge. Gataker undertook Sunday duty at Everton, Bedfordshire, where the vicar was reported to be 130 years of age. After half a year of this employment he left the university, on the advice of Ashton. The step seems to have followed the retirement of Bradshaw, who was in trouble through espousing the cause of John Darrel [q. v.], the exorcist (, Life of Bradshaw, pp. 32 sq.).

Gataker removed to London about the end of 1600, and became tutor in the family of Sir William Cooke at Charing Cross, ‘to whose lady he was near by blood.’ He preached occasionally at St. Martin's-in-the Fields. An old man-servant to the wife of James Ley (afterwards lord high treasurer) remarked that ‘he was a prettie pert boy, but he made a reasonable good sermon’ (Disc. Apol. p. 34). He obtained the lectureship at Lincoln's Inn through the good offices of James Montague, master of Sidney Sussex, who had come to London with the intention of bringing him back to fill a Hebrew chair.

When he entered on his duties at Lincoln's Inn (1601) there was but one Sunday lecture at seven o'clock in the morning; he got this altered to the usual hour, and transferred the Wednesday lecture to the Sunday afternoon. His salary for the first five years was 40l., and never more than 60l. Till he married he continued to live with Cooke, spending his vacations at Cooke's country seat in Northamptonshire. In 1603 he commenced B.D., when he preached for the only time at St. Mary's, Cambridge, on 25 March, the day after the death of Elizabeth. The morning preacher had prayed for the queen; the news came down about noon; James had not yet been proclaimed; Gataker prayed ‘for the present supream governor.’ He refused in 1609, and subsequently, to proceed to D.D., giving two reasons, his not being well enough off to maintain the dignity, ‘and also because, like Cato the censor, he would rather have people ask why he had no statue than why he had one.’ He declined the lectureship at the Rolls, with double his existing emolument, besides preferment offered him in Shropshire by Sir Roger Owen, and in Kent by Sir William Sedley.

In 1611 he accepted the rectory of Rotherhithe, Surrey, mainly at the instance of his friend Stock, the alternative being the appointment of an unworthy person. While his health permitted he was assiduous in public and pastoral duty; his Friday catechetical lectures for children were crowded, and ‘his parlour was one of the best schooles for a young student to learn divinity in.’ In 1620 he spent a month (13 July–14 Aug.) in Holland, travelling with a nephew, in order to inform himself of the condition of Dutch protestantism, whose interests he thought im-