Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/186

 was probably matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1603–4 (but there are no records of Oriel matriculations at that date), graduated B.A. at Oxford on 25 Feb. 1608, M.A. on 27 Jan. 1614, was fellow of Oriel in 1610–1621, and therein was tutor to Prynne, with whom he afterwards engaged in controversy. Born in the parish in which Endymion Porter [q. v.] lived, he was patronised by him in later years (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 4 Feb. 1639). In 1619 he became rector of St. Martin Carfax, Oxford, and, after resigning his fellowship at Oriel, he became vice-principal of Gloucester Hall. He was also chaplain to Katherine, duchess of Buckingham (preface to the Schismatical Puritan, 1631), and was highly thought of by Laud (Canterburie's Doome, p. 72). In 1630 he published a sermon preached at Witney ‘concerning the lawfulness of church authority, for ordaining and commanding of rites and ceremonies to beautify the church,’ under the title of ‘The Schismatical Puritan’ (1st ed. 1630; 2nd ed. 1631). It was answered by Prynne in an appendix to his ‘Anti-Arminianism’ (2nd ed. 1630). Widdowes replied in ‘The Lawless Kneeless Schismatical Puritan’ (Oxford, 1631), dedicated to Endymion Porter, in which he defended the church's order of bowing at the Holy Name. This Prynne answered in ‘Lame Giles his Haltings’ (1631). His sermons at Carfax, though popular among the royalists and soldiery, caused occasional riots among the puritan youths. At Laud's trial it was stated that he had set up a window in his church with a crucifix on it. He was generous to the poor, a strong antisabbatarian, dancing with his flock on Whit-Sunday, and worked energetically in his parish during the siege of Oxford. He died on 4 Feb. 1644–5, and was buried in the chancel of his church.

Wood describes him as ‘a harmless and honest man, a noted disputant, well read in the schoolmen, and as conformable to and zealous in the established discipline of the church of England as any person of his time, yet of so odd and strange parts that few or none could be compared with him.’

[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Wood's Athenæ and Fasti; Cal. State Papers, Dom.; Laud's Works; Atkyns's Gloucestershire; Fletcher's Church of St. Martin Carfax.]  WIDDRINGTON, RALPH (d. 1688), regius professor of Greek at Cambridge, younger son of Lewis Widdrington and brother of Sir Thomas Widdrington [q. v.], was born at Stamfordham, Northumberland, and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge. He must have been a college acquaintance of Milton's, whose ‘Lycidas’ first appeared in the same volume as a Latin poem by Widdrington (cf., Milton, new edit. i. 248, 651). He graduated B.A. in 1635 and M.A. in 1639, and was elected a fellow of his college. In 1647 he served the office of taxer of the university. He was one of the first to sign the ‘engagement’ in 1650, and on 2 Nov. in that year he was appointed public orator. He became regius professor of Greek in 1654. In 1661 he was created D.D. per literas regias. He was presented to the rectory of Thorp by the dean and chapter of Lincoln on 6 Feb. 1661. His brother-fellows, to whom, especially to Cudworth, he had long been obnoxious, ejected him from his fellowship in 1661, but he was restored upon appeal, and retained his fellowship, or at least resided in college, until his death. He became Lady Margaret's preacher in 1664, and Lady Margaret's professor of divinity on 4 March 1672–3. He was instituted to the rectory of Great Munden, Hertfordshire, on the presentation of the king, on 17 Dec. 1675, and died on 10 June 1688; on 30 Aug. following John Cole succeeded him in that rectory (, Hertfordshire, ii. 395). His will was proved on 2 Aug. 1689.

Besides many Latin letters and numerous copies of verses in the various university collections published on official occasions between 1637 and 1685, Widdrington has verses prefixed to Duport's ‘Homeri Gnomologia,’ 1660, and a treatise ‘Deipnon kai epideipnon, Cœna Dominica, cum micis aliquot epidorpidum,’ printed at the end of Thomas à Kempis's ‘De Christo imitando,’ Cambridge, 1688, 12mo.

[Hodgson's Hist. of Northumberland, II. ii. 542; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. MS.; Bodleian Cat.; Duport's Sylvæ, p. 389; Fisher's Funeral Sermon (Hymer's), p. 79; Kennett's Register, pp. 251, 375, 552; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), iii. 614, 638, 655, 660; Mayor's Cambridge in the Seventeenth Century, ii. 196; Pepys's Diary, 1849, i. 32, 34, 195; Worthington's Diary, ii. 160.]  WIDDRINGTON, ROGER (1563–1640), Benedictine monk, whose real name was, born in Shropshire in 1563, studied divinity under Vasquez at Rome and was ordained a secular priest, but in 1590 he made his profession as a monk of the order of St. Benedict at the convent of Monte Cassino. Being sent to the English mission in 1602 he was appointed by his abbot superior of the Italian Benedictines then serving it. Soon afterwards he was arrested and committed to prison. On his