WALTON, BRIAN, a very eminent biblical scholar, was born in the year 1600, at Seymour in the district of Cleveland in Yorkshire. He is said to have been admitted a sizar of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the month of July 1616. In 1618 he became a sizar of Peter House. He took the degree of A.B. in 1619, and that of A.M. in 1623. He left the university for a curacy and the mastership of a school in Suffolk. He next removed to the metropolis, as an assistant at the church of Allhallows, Bread Street; and in 1626 he was collated to the rectory of St Martin's Orgar, London. On the 15th of January 1635-6, he was instituted to the rectories of St Giles-in-the-Fields, and of Sandon in Essex. The former he does not appear to have retained. About this time, he is supposed to have been chaplain to the king, and to have been collated to a prebend of St Paul's. In 1639 he took the degree of D.D. at Cambridge; and in the public act, he maintained a thesis against the infallibility of the pope. His wife, Anne Claxton, died in the course of the following year.
Dr Walton was involved in the troubles which ensued; and in 1641 he is supposed to have been dispossessed of both his rectories. Towards the close of the year 1642 he was ordered into custody as a delinquent. Like many other members of his order, he afterwards sought a place of refuge at Oxford; and on the 12th of August 1645 he was incorporated doctor of divinity. Here among the learned fugitives he met with Dr Fuller, dean of Ely, whose daughter Jane became his second wife. On his return to London, he resided in the house of his father-in-law. Undismayed by the change of his circumstances, he planned and executed one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, literary enterprise of which his country can boast. This was the famous Polyglott Bible, of which the plan appears to have been brought to considerable maturity in the year 1652. The design was approved by the Council of State, who exempted from duty all the paper to be employed in the edition; and to the credit of the age it must be recorded, that in the month of May 1653, subscriptions had been obtained to the amount of £9000. Dr Walton had various coadjutors, but the very laborious task of editorship devolved upon himself. As a precursor, he published Introductio ad Lctionem Linguarum Orientalium, Lond. 1654, 8vo. This introduction was reprinted at London in 1655. The great work itself was completed in the space of about four years, and made its appearance under the title of Biblia Sacra Polyglotta, &c., Lond. 1657, 6 tom. folio. In this edition, nine languages are employed, but not a single book is printed in so many. The four
evangelists are in six, the other books of the New Testament only in five, and those of Judith and the Maccabees only in three. The Prolegomena have been repeatedly printed in a separate form, and are allowed by the most competent judges to be a work of great erudition, as well as of great value. The last edition is that of Wrangham, published at Cambridge in 1825, in 2 vols. 8vo.
Among those who assisted Walton in his very arduous undertaking, we must first of all mention the venerable Archbishop Usher, who not only aided and directed him by his counsel, but likewise furnished him with a collation of sixteen manuscripts. His learning was so varied and so profound, that it was of no small importance for the editor to have access to him on all occasions of doubt and difficulty. Another able coadjutor was Dr Lightfoot, and a third was Dr Pocock. The services of Edmund Castell, Abraham Wheelock, Patrick Young, Dudley Loftus, Herbert Thorndike, Thomas Hyde, Thomas Greaves, and several other individuals, are likewise commemorated. Selden, who possessed a great fund of oriental learning, was a zealous promoter of the design; and he joined with Usher in signing a recommendation which was printed with the prospectus. He was one of those to be consulted in the progress of the work, and his valuable library was open to the editor.
Dr Walton's next publication bears the title of Dissertatio, in qua de Linguis Orientalibus, Hebraica, Chaldaica, Samaritana, &c., et de Textuum et Versionum quae in Complutensibus, Regiis, Parisiensibus et Anglicanis Polyglottis Bibliis habentur, Antiquitate, Authoritate et Usu, breviter disseritur, Daventrie, 1658, 12mo. This is followed by Wower's Syntagma de Graeca et Latina Bibliorum Interpretatione. His meritorious labours were not duly appreciated by some of his contemporaries; and he was very unadvisedly attacked by Dr Owen, in Certain Considerations on the Prolegomena and Appendix to the late "Biblia Polyglotta." The writer was himself a man of learning; but the dangers which he contemplated were imaginary, and he ventured upon ground which he could not maintain against such an antagonist. His work was very ably refuted by Dr Walton, in The Considerator considered, Lond. 1659, 8vo. This work forms the second volume of Todd's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Brian Walton, D.D., Lord Bishop of Chester, Lond. 1821, 2 vols. 8vo.
At the period of the Restoration, Dr Walton's great and conspicuous merits could not be disregarded. He was speedily restored to his former preferments, and was nominated to the bishopric of Chester. On the 2d of December 1660, he was consecrated in Westminster Abbey. In March following he was one of the commissioners at the Savoy conference, which so strikingly displayed the unmitigated bigotry of the triumphant churchmen. The Bishop of Chester however appears to have acted with sufficient moderation. His new honours were very short and fleeting. He reached his episcopal seat on the 11th of September 1661; and having soon afterwards returned to London, he died there on the 29th of the ensuing November, in the sixty-second year of his age.