Thomas Harrison (translator)

He was born in London, and entered Merchant Taylors' School in 1570; he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1573 and graduated B.A. in 1577.^[1] At Cambridge his scholarship attracted the notice of William Whitaker. He became a Fellow and tutor of Trinity College.^[2]

Harrison was a puritan, and in 1589 is mentioned as attending a synod at St. John's College, along with Thomas Cartwright. He was a noted Christian Hebraist and among the revisers of the King James Bible. He belonged to the First Cambridge Company. For the last twenty years of his life he was vice-prefect of Trinity College.^[2]

He died in 1631 and was buried with some pomp in the chapel of his college. A Latin volume in his honour was written by Caleb Dalechamp (Dalecampius) and dedicated to John Bois; it is titled Harrisonus Honoratus: Id est Honorifica de Vita, &c. (Cambridge, 1632), and contains a meagre outline of his life in the form of a funeral oration, with some Latin verses to his memory.^[2][3]

• McClure, Alexander. (1858) The Translators Revived: A Biographical Memoir of the Authors of the English Version of the Holy Bible. Mobile, Alabama: R. E. Publications (republished by the Maranatha Bible Society, 1984 ASIN B0006YJPI8 )
• Nicolson, Adam. (2003) God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. New York: HarperCollins ISBN 0-06-095975-4

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Harrison, Thomas (1555-1631)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.