Grindal, Edmund, Dd

Grindal, Edmund, D.D., archbishop of Canterbury, was born in the year 1519, in Cumberland. He was educated at Magdalen College, Cambridge, and was on all occasions distinguished as a learned man at the university. In 1550 he was selected by Rid-ley, bishop of London, as his chaplain. In 1553, on the death of king Edward VI, apprehending the persecution of the Protestants, he fled to Strasburg, in Germany, where he was well received. During his residence abroad he devoted much time to the duties of religion, to his studies, to the matter of the controversies at Frankfort, and to assisting Mr. John Fox in his Martyrology. In 1558. Grindal, on the accession of queen Elizabeth to the crown, returned to England; was diligently employed in the reformation of religion; assisted in public disputations; preached at the court and at St. Paul's with great zeal and piety; and in 1559, on the removal of Bonner, bishop of London, the queen thought none so fit to succeed him as Grindal. He reluctantly accepted the office, but nobly discharged its duties. In 1575 he was nominated and appointed for the see of Canterbury, but in 1576, opposing the queen in some of her arbitrary proceedings concerning ecclesiastical affairs, he was sequestered from his office. In 1582 he offered his resignation, but, before the measure was completed, he died on the 6th of July, 1583, at Croydon. Grindal Was a man of sincere personal piety, and of great firmness and resolution, though of a mild and affable temper and friendly disposition. In the time in which he lived, he was celebrated for his episcopal abilities and admirable endowments for spiritual government, as well as his singular learning. The High-churchmen call him an ultra-Protestant, from the favor he showed to the Puritans, and from his abhorrence of Romanizing tendencies. His Remains, edited for the Parker Society, appeared in Cambridge, 1843 (8vo). Jones, Christian Biog. p. 192; Neal, History of the Puritans, vol. i; Burnet, History of the Reformation, vols. ii, iii; Strype, Life and Acts of Abp. Grindal (Oxford, 1821, 8vo).