Laurence, a learned English divine, was born at Newport-Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, about the year 1527. He received his school education at Cambridge, and afterwards became a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took his degree as master of arts in 1552. In 1553 he retired, with other Protestant refugees, to Zurich, in Switzerland, where he resided for some time; but after the death of Queen Mary he returned to England, where he was restored to his fellowship in Magdalen College, from which he had been expelled, and in 1560 appointed queen's professor of divinity at Oxford. In 1570 he was made dean of Gloucester; in 1580 he was removed to the deanery of Winchester; and, if he had not been disaffected towards the Church of England, in other words, a moderate and conscientious Nonconformist, he would probably have been raised to the episcopal bench. Humphrey was considered as a great and general scholar, an able linguist, a profound theologian, and, for his time, an excellent writer. He died early in 1590, leaving a wife who had brought him twelve children. His works are, *Epistolae de Graecis literis, et Homeri lectione et imitatione*, Basil, 1558; *De Religiosis conversatione et reformatione, deque primatu Regum*, Basil, 1559; *De Ratione interpretandi auctores*, Basil, 1559; *Optimates, sive de Nobilitate, episcopique antiqua origine*, Basil, 1560; *Joannis Juilli Angli, Episcopi Sarisburiensis, Vita et Moris*, London, 1573; two Latin Orations spoken before Queen Elizabeth, one in 1572, and the other in 1575; *Sermons*; and some Latin pieces against the Papists, particularly Campian.