Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Acworth, George
ACWORTH, GEORGE, LL.D. (d. 1578?), civilian and divine, was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1552–3. He was admitted a fellow of his college 26 Jan. 1553–4, and graduated M.A. in 1555, subscribing the Roman catholic articles imposed in that year upon all graduates. During the reign of Queen Mary he resided abroad, studying the civil law in France and Italy. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he returned to England, and was elected public orator of the university of Cambridge in 1559. At the close of that year he obtained a prebend in the church of Southwell, which he resigned in 1566. He was admitted an advocate in 1562, and created LL.D. of Cambridge in the following year. Dr. Acworth was chancellor and vicar-general to Horne, bishop of Winchester. About 1570 he became a member of the household of Archbishop Parker. He was employed in a visitation of the church and diocese of Canterbury in 1573, and we find him holding the rectory of Wroughton, in Wiltshire, on 4 May 1575, when he had a faculty to hold another benefice at the same time. Though a man of considerable talent, he was idle, addicted to drinking, and otherwise of dissolute habits. On this account he lost all his preferments in England, but on 18 March 1576–7 was constituted master of the faculties and judge of the prerogative court in Ireland. The last notice we have found of him is dated 20 Dec. 1578, when letters-patent were issued to him and Robert Garvey to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Ireland.
Dr. Acworth is the author of: 1. ‘Epistola de Ratione Studiorum suorum,’ 1560. MS. in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 2. ‘Oratio encomiastica in restitutione Buceri et Fagii,’ printed in Bucer's ‘Scripta Anglicana.’ 3. ‘De visibili Romanarchia, contra Nich. Sanderi Monarchiam προλεγομἐνον, Libri duo,’ Lond., 1573, 4to. 4. Preface to the second book of Bucer's Works. Dr. Acworth also assisted Archbishop Parker in the compilation of his celebrated work, ‘De Antiquitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ.’
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Coote's Civilians, 46; Index to Strype's Works; MS. Cotton. Titus B, xiii. 256; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab, i. 381, 566; Nasmith's Cat. C.C.C. MSS. 169.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.2
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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