CANNE, JonN. The place and date of his birth are unknown, though the latter is supposed to be about 159o. He is said to have been originally a minister of the Established Church, but for the greater part of his life he was one of its most de cided opponents. In 1621 he was chosen pastor over a Nonconformist (Neal says a Brownist or In dependent) church in London. After preaching in that capacity for a year or two, he was driven by the severity of the times to Holland, and became pastor of the ancient English Church at Amster dam, carrying on at the same time the business of a printer. After seventeen years' absence, he re turned to his native land in 1640. Between the years 1634 and 1640 he had become a Baptist, and in 1641 visited Bristol, and as a baptized man' was invited to assist in the formation of the Broad mead Baptist church in that city. He again suf fered severity from the dominant ecclesiastical powers, though acquitted when brought to trial, about five months before Cromwell's death, in 1658. How soon after this he returned to Amster
dam is not known, but he died there in 1667. The work by which he is best known, and which has conferred upon him a lasting reputation, is his Reference Bible, which has formed the basis of all similar undertakings. Eleven editions at least are known to have been published in little more than a century, from 1644 to 1754. They are given in Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, Lond. 545, vol. ii. p. 559 who says—' Several of these books are but too incorrect, and many of the later have been corrupted by additional texts.' His other works are numerous, and occasioned by the peculiar circumstances of the times. (Canne's Necessity of Separation from the Church of Eng land, etc., with an Introductory Notice by the Rev.
C. Stove!, London, 1849 ; Neal's Hist. of the Puri tans, 1732, vol. ii. ch. 7.)—J. E. R.