Strype, John
STRYPE, JOHN (1643-1737), English historian and biographer, was born in Houndsditch, London, on the 1st of November 1643. He was the son of John Strype, or van Stryp, a member of a Brabant family who, to escape religious persecution, settled in London, in a place afterwards known as Strype's Yard in Petticoat Lane, as a merchant and silk throwster. The younger John was educated at St Paul's School, and on the 5th of July 1662 entered Jesus College, Cambridge; thence he proceeded to Catherine Hall, where he graduated B. A. in 1665 and M.A. in 1669. On the 14th of July of the latter year he became perpetual curate of Theydon Bois, Essex, and a few months afterwards curate and lecturer of Leyton in the same county. He was never instituted or inducted to the living of Leyton, but in 1674 he was licensed by the bishop of London to preach and expound the word of God, and to perform the full office of priest and curate while it was vacant, and until his death he received the profits of it. In 1711 he obtained from Archbishop Tenison the sinecure of West Tarring, Sussex, and he discharged the duties of lecturer at Hackney from 1689 till 1724. At the latter place he spent his last years with a married granddaughter, the wife of a surgeon, Thomas Harris, dying there on the nth of December 1737, at the age of ninety-four. He was buried in the church at Leyton.
Through his friendship with Sir William Hicks Strype obtained access to the papers of Sir Michael Hicks, secretary to Lord Burghley, from which he made extensive transcripts ; he also carried on an extensive correspondence with Archbishop Wake and Bishops Burnet, Atterbury and Nicholson. The materials thus obtained formed the basis of his historical and biographical works, which relate chiefly to the period of the Reformation. The greater portions of his original materials have been preserved, and are included in the Lansdowne manuscripts in the British Museum. His works can scarcely be entitled original compositions, his labour having consisted chiefly in the arrangement of his materials, but on this very account they are of considerable value as convenient books of reference, easier of access and almost as trustworthy as the original documents. The most important of Strype's works are the Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1694 (ed. for the Eccl. Hist. Soc., in 3 vols., Oxford, 1848-1854; and in 2 vols. with notes by P. E. Barnes, London, 1853); Life of the learned Sir Thomas Smith (1698) ; Life and Acts of John Aylmer, Lord Bishop of London (i 701 ) ; Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, with his Treatise on Superstition (1705); Annals of the Reformation in England (4 vols.; vol. i. 1709 [reprinted 1725], vol. ii. 1725, vol. iii. 1728, vol. iv. 1731; 2nd ed., 1735. 4 vols. ; 3rded., 1736-1738, 4 vols.) ; Life and Acts of Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury (1710), of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury (1711), and of John Whitgifl, Archbishop of Canterbury (1718) ; A n Accurate Edition of Stow' s Survey of London (1720), a valuable edition of Stow, although its interference with the original text is a method of editing which can scarcely be reckoned fair to the original author; and Ecclesiastical Memorials (3 vols., 1721; 3 vols., 1733). His Historical and Biographical Works were reprinted in 19 vols. at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, between 1812 (Cranmer) and 1824 (Annals). A general index by R. F. Laurence in 2 vol&. was added in 1828. Strype also published, besides a number of single sermons, an edition of John Lightfopt's Works (1684); and in 1700 Some genuine Remains of John Lightfoot . . . with a large preface concerning the author.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
