Richard Holdsworth (or Houldsworth, Oldsworth) (1590, in Newcastle upon Tyne – 22 August 1649) was an English academic theologian, and Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1637 to 1643. Although Emmanuel was a Puritan stronghold, Holdsworth, who in religion agreed,[1] in the political sphere resisted Parliamentary interference, and showed Royalist sympathies.
Richard Holdsworth was the son of Richard Holdswourth, Vicar of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and baptised at St Nicholas, Newcastle on 20 December 1590. He entered St. John's College, Cambridge as a scholar in 1607, graduated B.A. in 1610, and became a Fellow in 1613.
He was chaplain to Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet.[2] He was rector of St Peter-le-Poor, London in 1624.[3]
He was in 1629 the first Gresham College divinity lecturer appointed from the Puritan camp;[4] he held the position until 1637. A London reputation[5] brought him the presidency of Sion College in 1639. He became Archdeacon of Huntingdon.
He was a member of the Westminster Assembly.[6] He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, for two years, and Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity, from 1643. He lost his position as Master of Emmanuel, because of expressed royalist opinions;[7] and was briefly imprisoned by Parliament.
He was appointed Dean of Worcester by the King, in 1647.[8] It is also claimed that the King wanted to appoint him Bishop of Bristol; this is mentioned by Thomas Fuller.[9] Given the wartime conditions, these appointments could have been taken up only with difficulty.
He is said to have been a modernizer in education, in the line of Francis Bacon and Comenius,[10] and a proponent of unadorned prose.[11] His students at St. John's included Simonds D'Ewes, whom he instructed by means of a system of note-taking.[12]
He provided John Wallis with an introduction to William Oughtred, steering Wallis towards mathematics (Wallis graduated BA at Emmanuel as Holdsworth arrived).
He was also a bibliophile who amassed a private collection of 10,000 books, bequeathed to the Cambridge University Library.[13] It arrived there in 1664, after a long legal limbo caused by testamentary conditions. It is said to have been the largest private collection of the time in England.[14]
The Directions for a Student in the Universite[15] has been attributed to him. The attribution is questioned by Hill as not certain.[16] This work is a scheme of a four-year classical education.[17]