Edward Reynolds
British bishop (1599-1676)
Edward Reynolds (November 1599 – 28 July 1676) was a bishop of Norwich in the Church of England and an author. He was born in Holyrood parish in Southampton, the son of Augustine (Austin) Reynolds, one of the customers of the city, and his wife, Bridget.
Career
In 1615, Reynolds became postmaster of Merton College and in 1620, probationer fellow. In 1622 he was appointed Preacher at Lincoln's Inn (where he is memorialised by his arms sculpted on a corbel supporting the roof of a Hall) from 1627 to 1628 served as the thirty-seventh vicar of All Saints' Church, Northampton, and in 1631 rector of Braunston, also in Northamptonshire; but with the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, he sided with the Presbyterians.
In 1643 he was one of the Westminster Assembly divines, and took the covenant in 1644. In 1648 he became dean of Christ Church, Oxford and vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. He refused the engagement (1651) and despite his promise of obedience to the law, but not subscription to the oath in Humble Proposals of Sundry Learned and Pious Divines (1649), this was insufficient to save him; he lost the vice-chancellorship in September 1650. He was ejected from his deanery the following March, despite a last minute pledge to subscribe in a limited sense. He preached before parliament in January 1657, and the same year he became vicar of St Lawrence Jewry, London, but was restored to his deanery in 1659.
After the death of Oliver Cromwell, he and other presbyterians sought an accommodation with Richard Cromwell, and on 11 October 1658, on behalf of himself and other London presbyterian ministers, Reynolds delivered an oral address to the new protector.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edward Reynolds” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.