John Strype

1643-1734. English church historian and biographer. Born at Houndsditch, London, he was educated at Cambridge and eventually became curate at Leyton, followed or accompanied from 1689 by a lectureship at Hackney and (1711) the sinecure of West Tarring, Sussex. A poor historian and worse stylist, he was a great and an unscrupulous collector of documents. His principal contribution is the publication of these sources in the valuable Annals of the Reformation... (2nd ed., 4 vols., 1725-31) and Ecclesiastical Memorials (4 vols., 1721-33), and also in numerous appendices in biographies, e.g., of Archbishops Cranmer (1694), Grindal (1710), Parker (1711), and Whitgift (1718), and (especially worthwhile) of the Edwardian humanists Sir Thomas Smith (1689) and Sir John Cheke (1705).