Francis Cheynell


Francis Cheynell was a prominent English religious controversialist, of Presbyterian views, and President of St John's College, Oxford 1648 to 1650, imposed by the Parliamentary regime.
His Aulicus of 1644 is accounted the first work of speculative fiction to be set in a hypothetical future, in this case the return of Charles I of England.

Life

He became a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, in 1629, and took an M.A. in 1633. He was a vicar in Hertfordshire and then at Marston St Lawrence, Northamptonshire from 1637; he lost his position in Oxford, as an opponent of William Laud, in 1638. Pushed out by Royalist forces, he became a chaplain to the New Model Army, and a member of the Westminster Assembly.
He became Rector of Petworth, Sussex, imposed by Parliament in 1643, in place of Henry King, the bishop of Chichester, and ‘in practice though not in name bishop of the diocese,’ until the Restoration.
He acted as Visitor to the University of Oxford, from 1647. He was also Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University until deposed at the Restoration.

Heresy hunter

He has been characterized as ‘One of the foremost heresiographers of the 1640s’. He attacked, under the name of Socinianism, early non-Trinitarian thinkers, tending to Unitarianism. He was very much an alarmist in tone, and at times perhaps afflicted by mental illness.
He assailed Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, his failed convert William Chillingworth, Henry Hammond, John Webberley, William Erbery, Gilbert Sheldon, Jasper Mayne, John Bidle and John Fry.

Works