George Abbot Tour Of Guildford England
You've probably never heard of George Abbot.
You might look him up on Wikipedia,Mbt Staka Sandalen, as I did. He looks rather boring in his picture, in the plain white and black of a Protestant divine, and a black cap on his balding head. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary, which calls him a "sincere but narrow-minded Calvinist," doesn't make him sound any more appealing. But he's actually rather an intriguing character - and a local boy made good.
There were six little Abbot boys, and three of them - George, Robert, and the youngest, Maurice - did well for themselves; George became archbishop, Robert became bishop of Salisbury, and the youngest, Maurice, became a wealthy merchant and an alderman of London. Their father was one of the richer wool merchants and a member of the council, and sent them to the Royal Grammar School. It was immediately obvious that Robert and George were very bright indeed; George went straight to Oxford, with a brilliant scholarly career that eventually made him Master of University College - and then, in quick succession, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry,Mbt Schuhe Koshi, bishop of London, and Archbishop of Canterbury.
He's not buried in Canterbury Cathedral, but here in Guildford, in the church of Holy Trinity - his marble tomb, paid for by his younger brother Maurice, survived the destruction of the medieval church. A nice touch is the fact that the pillars of the canopy are supported on books. It's a really exuberant, expensive tomb; Maurice did his brother proud.
There's a statue of him the High Street now - it was unveiled in 1993 - and he's shown very much as a Protestant divine, rather than an archbishop in full pontificals. The archbishop who came after him,Mbt Fanaka GTX Schuhe Verkauf, William Laud,Mbt Schuhe Kesho, was a very different kind of archbishop, who brought back much of the ceremonial the Puritans disapproved of - and lost his head on account of his unpopular opinions. You can see, too, that Abbot has his bible open in his hand. Remember that, we'll come back to it later. There's a pub named after him, as well - though I'm not sure he'd have approved.
Next stop in our Guildford tour of Abbot is the Trinity Hospital, which Abbot founded in 1619 and which got its royal charter in 1622. It was to give lodgings and a living to 12 aged men and 8 aged women under a resident Master - a little like an Oxford college (could he have been remembering his life at Oxford?); remember that in a century when the average life expectancy was only 40,Mbt Sandalen Panda, sixty (the qualification for entry to the Hospital) was a great age indeed.
Abbot was actually playing copycat here; the previous archbishop, Whitgift, had built a hospital in his native Croydon. But even if his gift wasn't original, it's certainly splendid, with its huge gatehouse,Mbt Schuhe Wingu, curly gables, and impressive frontage.
Like a college, the hospital clusters its residents' lodgings around a chapel and a common hall. From May to September,MBT Shuguli Schuhe, the hospital offers tours on Saturdays at 11 - just turn up at the gatehouse.
By the way, if you spot Abbot's motto, 'clamamus abba pater', there's a rather obscure scholarly joke involved. 'Abba' is the name of God - but also means 'abbot', so that it could be read as either 'we call God our father', a pious statement, or 'we call Abbot our father' - the founder of the hospital. George Abbot certainly had a sense of humour, but it was very much the humour of an Oxford don. He might have got on with Lewis Carroll, another man with Guildford connections.
Abbot also founded a 'manufacture', a cloth making factory, in an attempt to provide employment in a time of recession. The wool trade was declining - perhaps one reason his brother Maurice ended up in London - and he aimed to retrain workers in making linen. But it never took off, and by 1654 the factory had closed down.
However Abbot's real legacy to posterity is much greater than any charitable foundation. Remember that Bible he was holding? He was one of the translators of the King James Bible - a monument of the English language second, perhaps, only to Shakespeare's plays.相关的主题文章：
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