William Branthwaite - expertise in Greek

Curriculum Vitae

William Branthwaite was born in 1563 into a landed Norfolk family. He entered Clare College, Cambridge in 1579 and graduated BA in 1583. He became a founding fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1585 under Laurence Chaderton. He was the first of eighteen members of his family to enter Emmanuel, receiving an MA in 1586. He then narrowed his focus to divinity as was the custom, and took a BTh in 1593, and was finally awarded a DTh (or DD, Paine) in 1598.

Master of Gonvile and Caius College

On 9 December 1607 he became master of Gonville and Caius [pron: keys] by royal mandate. He became vice-chancellor of the university in 1618, but died in January 1619, before the end of his year of office. In his will, proved on 11 March, he made a substantial bequest of books and property to his college, and was also a benefactor to Emmanuel.

Stephen Hawking, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College
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Translation Committee

(Greek MS) "Love is patient," 1 Cor. 13
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Branthwaite was reputed to have a thorough mastery of Greek, and this doubtless secured him a place among the biblical revisers of the "Second Cambridge Company" charged by James I of England with translating the Apocrypha.

Branthwaite died 1620. He was known as a wit (Benson Bobrick). Says McClure,

These few items go to mark him as a learned, reverend, and worshipful divine

Vivienne Westbrook, ‘Authorized Version of the Bible, translators of the (act. 1604–1611)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/74199, accessed 9 Sept 2011]

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