Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/296

 # ‘A Tour round England,’ 2 vols. 1870. 19. ‘Criss Cross Journeys,’ 2 vols. 1873.



THORNDIKE, HERBERT (1598–1672), Anglican divine, was the third son of Francis Thorndike, a Lincolnshire gentleman of good family, and Alice, his wife, daughter of Edward Colman, of a family resident at Burnt Ely Hale, and at Waldingfield in Suffolk. On 18 Dec. 1613 he entered as a pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was elected a scholar at the following Easter. In January 1617 he proceeded B.A., in 1618 was elected a minor fellow, and in 1620 (on his admission to the degree of M.A.) a major fellow of the college. For upwards of a quarter of a century from the time of his first entry his career was that of an indefatigable student, although he was also active as a college tutor, deputy public orator, and university preacher, and occasionally resided on his college living. The bent of his studies was towards theology and oriental languages, and especially rabbinical literature. As a churchman, his position at this period was that of a moderate Anglican. On 13 April 1636 he was installed by Bishop Williams prebendary of Layton Ecclesia in the cathedral of Lincoln, just vacated by the death of his personal friend, George Herbert. In 1640 he resigned his stall on his preferment to the crown living of Claybrook, near Lutterworth; the parsonage house which he afterwards erected there was noted as one of the finest in the county. In October 1640 he was appointed Hebrew lecturer to his college, and in June 1642 was transferred from Claybrook to the living of Barley in Hertfordshire (also pro hac vice in the gift of the crown); while at Trinity he received, about the same time, the additional appointment of senior bursar. In 1641 he published at the University Press his first tractate, 'Of the Government of Churches: a Discourse pointing at the Primitive Form,' and in the following year that entitled 'Of Religious Assemblies, and the Publick Service of God.' In September 1643, the mastership of Sidney-Sussex College having fallen vacant, his friend [q. v.] (a fellow of that society), in conjunction with a majority of the other fellows, sought to carry Thorndike's election. Their design was defeated by Cromwell, who caused one of Thorndike's supporters to be arrested and conveyed away, thereby procuring the election of Richard Minshull. In 1644 the disfavour into which Trinity College had fallen with the parliamentary party compelled Thorndike to retire from his living of Barley, which was sequestered to Henry Prime, a parishioner; in 1647 one Peter Smith was appointed minister, on whose death (August 1657) [q. v.] succeeded. At nearly the same time a large number of the fellows of Trinity being ejected from the foundation, Thorndike deemed it prudent to withdraw from Cambridge, although his own name appears not to have been removed from the boards until 18 May 1646. He was now and down to 1652 reduced to great shifts, but was assisted by occasional bounties from his college and by the liberality of Lord Scudamore, whose religious views had a close affinity to his own (, Chronicle, p. 861; see, first ). According to Calamy (Life of Baxter, 2nd ed. ii. 362), he was also 'punctually paid ' the prescribed 'fifth' by his successors at Barley; while his elder brother Francis, who had succeeded to the paternal estate in 1644, probably gave him substantial aid. That he resided either in London or Cambridge is to be inferred from the fact that his 'Right of the Church in a Christian State' (1649) was printed at the capital, and a new edition of his two tractates, 'The Primitive Government of Churches' and 'The Service of God,' enlarged with a Review,' at the University Press. The appearance of the latter was due to the prescribed use of the 'Directory.'

Thorndike took an active part in the editing of Walton's 'Polyglott,' the Syriac portion of which was his special contribution. During the progress of the work he carried on a considerable correspondence with Ussher, Walton, and Pocock, of which, however, only a portion is still extant. The completion of these labours in 1657 afforded him leisure for other designs. He collected materials for a new edition of 'Origen,' a project which he never carried to accomplishment, his chief efforts during the remainder of his life being devoted to the composition of his principal work, the 'Epilogue,' and the advocacy of the theory which it embodied (essentially the same as that of the old catholics of the present day) that the Reformation, as a durable settlement, was practicable only on the basis of a return to the discipline and teaching of the primitive catholic church. In order to secure for the book a wider circulation, he wrote it in Latin, although he did not include either the church of Rome or the