Thomas Lydiat’s Scholarship in Prison: Discovery and Disaster in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Like so many early modern intellectuals, Thomas Lydiat (1572-1646) found himself in prison for a stretch of years and decided there could be no better place for continuing his scholarly work. This article both explains the chronological arguments Lydiat devised--he presented a new interpretation of the Biblical prophecy of Daniel, which was thought to prove the divinity of Jesus, on the basis of a newly discovered Greek inscription--and argues that his series of writings had the very material purpose of attracting attention and setting him free. Lydiat's story also reveals that at this time individual prisoners remained well respected by their peers, yet the actual experience of prison could seem like a personal stain: in his posthumously published works, Lydiat's imprisonment is never mentioned, and we learn about it only from his original manuscripts in Oxford.