Richard Snoddy; Hannah Wood
ODNB (Article 28658)
Brian Walton was born in the district of Cleveland in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He matriculated from Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1616 and migrated to Peterhouse in 1618, whence he graduated B.A. in 1620 and proceeded M.A. in 1623. He was ordinated in 1623 and took up a clerical and teaching ministry in Suffolk, where he met his first wife, Anne Claxton (d.1640). He served as assistant to Richard Stock, rector of All Hallows, Bread Street in London before 1625, and held an indeterminate position in the parish following Stock’s death in 1626. In October 1628 he was presented to the rectory of St Martin Orgar, Cannon Street. Walton was presented to the livings of St-Giles-in-the-Fields and Sandon, Essex in 1636, but quickly resigned the former. He proceeded D.D. in 1639. During the 1630s he clashed with his puritan parishioners over underpayment of tithes, spurring Walton to present a petition to Charles I accompanied by a treatise on the history of tithes. In 1641 a group of Walton’s puritan parishioners at St Martin Orgar presented their own petition to parliament requesting Walton’s deprivation; the following year he was summoned as a delinquent by the House of Commons and was sequestered from his benefices in 1643. He was subsequently appointed to wait on the Duke of York in 1645. He moved to London and married his second wife, Jane Fuller, sometime before 1657 when his son Bryan was baptized. Walton is best known for developing the project of producing a polyglot Bible, enlisting the service of many eminent scholars. The Bible was printed in six volumes between 1653 and 1657 to commercial success and scholarly acclaim. Walton was reinstated to his benefices at the Restoration, serving as chaplain-in-ordinary to the king. He received a prebend in St Paul’s Cathedral in 1660, and later that year was made bishop of Chester. He died in London on 29 November 1661.