Fuller, Thomas 1608-61
English clergyman and writer

Born in Aldwinkle St Peter's, Northamptonshire, he studied at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and became prebendary of Salisbury in 1631 and rector of Broadwindsor, Dorset, in 1634. His first ambitious work, The History of the Holy War (1639), was about the Crusades. Just before the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed preacher to the Chapel Royal at the Savoy in London, and during the war he was chaplain to the Royalist commander, Ralph Hopton (1598-1652). He compiled a collection of miscellanies in The Holy State and The Profane State (1642), and wrote tracts for the troops, Good Thoughts in Bad Times (1645), Good Thoughts in Worse Times (1647), and The Cause and Cure of a Troubled Conscience (1647), and a satire directed at Oliver Cromwell called Andronicus, or the Unfortunate Politician (1646). In 1649 he was given the curacy of Waltham Abbey, and in 1655 he brought out his long-projected Church History of Britain, to which was appended his History of Cambridge University. With the Restoration he published Mixt Contemplations in Better Times (1660) and was appointed chaplain-extraordinary to Charles II. He did not live to complete his most famous work, History of the Worthies of Britain, an encyclopaedic miscellany about the counties of Great Britain and their notable men. It was published the year after his death.