Richard Crakanthorpe

1567-1624. Anglican scholar. Born in Westmoreland, he was educated at Queen's College, Oxford, where he also became a fellow. Coming under the influence of John Reynolds (Rainolds*), he became a zealous Puritan. He was, however, known as a learned man and was chosen to accompany, as chaplain, Lord Evers, the ambassador of James I to the court of Emperor Rudolph II. Later he served as a chaplain both to the bishop of London and to the king. In 1605 he became rector of Black Notley, Essex, and in 1617 rector of Paglesham, Essex. He engaged in controversy with Mark Antonio de Dominis, archbishop of Spalato, who claimed to be a convert to the Protestant Church of England. Crakanthorpe's most famous book, Defensio Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1625), was an answer to the defense of the retraction (Consilium Reditus) of de Dominis after he had returned to Roman Catholicism.