BROUGHTON, HUGH, a learned scholar and divine, was born at Oldbury in Shropshire, in 1549. After receiving the rudiments of his education at a provincial school, he went to Cambridge, where in due time he was chosen a fellow of Christ's College, and took orders in the church. During his career at the university, he laid the foundation of the Hebrew scholarship, for which he was afterwards so distinguished. From Cambridge he went to London, where his eloquence gained him many and powerful friends. In 1588 he published his first work, "a little book of great pains," entitled the Consent of Scriptures. This work was strongly opposed at both the great universities, and the author was obliged to defend it, which he did in a series of lectures. In 1589 he went to Germany, where he frequently engaged in discussions, both with papists and with the learned Jews whom he met at Frankfort and elsewhere. In 1591 he returned to England, and published an "Explication of the article of Christ's descent into Hell," which like his last treatise elicited a violent opposition. In 1592 he once more went abroad, and cultivated the acquaintance of the principal scholars of the different countries through which he passed. Such was the esteem in which he was held even by his papist opponents, that he was offered a cardinal's hat if he would renounce the protestant faith; which, however, he declined to do. On the accession of James he returned to England; but not being engaged to co-operate in the new translation of the Bible then begun, he retired to Middlebury in Holland, where he preached to the English congregation. In 1611 he returned to England, where he died in the following year. Some of his works were collected and published in a large folio volume in 1662, but many of his theological MSS. remain still unedited in the British Museum.