Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Denton, Henry
DENTON, HENRY (1633?–1681), writer, born about 1633, was a son of Thomas Denton, member of an ancient Cumberland family living at Warnell-Denton in that county. Another Thomas Denton was the author of a manuscript ‘History of Cumberland,’ written in 1688, and much quoted by Lysons. Henry went to Oxford in 1653, graduated B.A. on 21 March 1656, and M.A. 1659. The following year he was elected fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, and in 1664 he went to Constantinople as chaplain to the English ambassador, serving also in that capacity the Levant Company. He returned to England when the ambassador retired from his charge, and not long afterwards, in 1673, he received from the provost and fellows of his college the living of Blechingdon in Oxfordshire. Here he died on 19 Aug. 1681, and was buried in the parish church.
In 1678 he published in London a work written in Greek by Joasaph Georginos, archbishop of Samos, which Denton translated into English under the title of ‘A Description of the Present State of Samos, Nicaria, Patmos, and Mount Athos.’
The archbishop had visited Oxford for the purpose of collecting funds to pay for the completion of the Greek church in Soho Fields, London, under the sanction of Compton, bishop of London. Greek Street and Compton Street, Soho, derive their names from this circumstance.
[Wood's Athenæ, iv. 528; Lysons's Magna Brit. iv. 154; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. xii. 165; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ii. coll. 192, 219; Pearson's Chaplains to the Levant Company.]