WHITGIFT, JOHN (1530?-1604), English archbishop, was the eldest son of Henry Whitgift, merchant of Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, where he was born. He was educated by his uncle, Robert Whitgift, abbot of the neighbouring monastery of Wellow, then at St. Anthony's school, London, and finally at Cambridge, where he became a fellow of Peterhouse in 1555. Having taken orders in 1560, he became chaplain to the bishop of Ely, who collated him to the rectory of Teversham, Cambridgeshire. In 1563 he was appointed Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge, and in 1564 regius professor of divinity. He became master first of Pembroke Hall and then of Trinity. He had a principal share in compiling the statutes (1570) of the university, and in November of the same year was chosen vice-chancellor. Macaulay's description of Whitgift as "a narrow, mean, tyrannical priest, who gained power by servility and adulation," is unjust, but he was intolerant and arbitrary. Whitgift, with other heads of the university, deprived Thomas Cartwright in 1570 of his pro fessorship, and in Sept. 1571, as master of Trinity, deprived him of his fellowship. In June of the same year Whitgift was nomi nated dean of Lincoln. In the following year he published An Answere to a Certain Libel intituled an Admonition to the Parlia ment, which led to further controversy with Cartwright. On March 24, 1577, Whitgift was appointed bishop of Worcester, and during the absence of Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland (1577) he acted as vice-president of Wales. In August 1583 he was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. Although he wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth remonstrating against the alienation of church prop erty, Whitgift always retained her special confidence. In his policy against the Puritans, and in his vigorous enforcement of the subscription test, he thoroughly carried out the queen's policy of religious uniformity. He drew up articles aimed at nonconforming ministers, and obtained increased powers for the Court of High Commission. In 1586 he became a privy councillor. His action gave rise to the Marprelate tracts, in which the bishops and clergy were bitterly attacked. Through Whitgift's vigilance the printers of the
tracts were discovered and punished; and in order more effectually to check the publication of such opinions he got a law passed in 1593 making Puritanism an offence against the statute law. In the controversy between Walter Travers and Richard Hooker he inter posed by prohibiting the preaching of the former and he more over presented Hooker with the rectory of Boscombe, Wilts., in order to afford him more leisure to complete his Ecclesiastical Polity, a work which, however, cannot be said to represent either Whitgift's theological or his ecclesiastical standpoint. In 1595 he, in conjunction with the bishop of London and other prelates, drew up the Calvinistic instrument known as the Lambeth Arti cles, which were not accepted by the church. Whitgift attended Elizabeth on her deathbed, and crowned James I. He was present at the Hampton Court Conference in Jan. 1604, and died at Lam beth on Feb. 29 of that year. He was buried in the church of Croydon. Whitgift was noted for his hospitality, and was osten tatious in his habits, sometimes visiting Canterbury and other towns attended by a retinue of Boo horsemen. His name is com memorated in the hospital for poor persons and the schools founded by him at Croydon in Whitgift left several unpublished works, which are included among the mss. Angliae. Many of his letters, articles, injunctions, etc., are cal endared in the published volumes of the "State Paper" series of the reign of Elizabeth. His Collected Works, ed. for the Parker Society by John Ayre (3 vols., Cambridge, 1851-53), include, besides the con troversial tracts already alluded to, two sermons published during his lifetime, a selection from his letters to Cecil and others, and some por tions of his unpublished mss.
A Life of Whitgift by Sir G. Paule (1612, 2nd ed. 1649) was embod ied by John Strype in his Life and Acts of Whitgift (1718). There is also a life in C. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography (1810), W. F. Hook's Archbishops of Canterbury (1875), and vol. i. of Whitgift's Collected Works. See also H. J. Clayton, Whitgift and his Times (19").