OVERALL, John, a celebrated English bishop, was born in 1559, and, after a proper foundation in grammatical learning, was sent to St John’s College, Cambridge, and elected a scholar of that society; but having afterwards removed to Trinity, he was chosen fellow of that college. In 1596 he was made regius professor of divinity, when he took his degree of doctor, and about the same time was elected master of Catherine Hall. In 1601 he was promoted to the deanery of St Paul’s, London, by the recommendation of his patron, Sir Fulke Greville, and Queen Elizabeth; and in the beginning of King James’s reign he was chosen prolocutor of the lower house of convocation. In 1612 he was appointed one of the first governors of the Charter-House Hospital, then just founded by Mr Thomas Sutton. In April 1614 he was made Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry; and in 1618 he was translated to Norwich, where he died in May 1619, at the age of about sixty. He was buried in that cathedral, where he lay unnoticed and forgotten till some years after the restoration of Charles Ii., when Cosin, bishop of Durham, who had been his secretary, erected a monument, with a Latin inscription, in which he is said to be “Vir undequaque doctissimus, et omni encomio major.”

Wood observes, that he had the character of being the best scholastic divine in England; and Cosin, who perhaps may be thought to rival him in that sort of learning, calls himself his scholar, and declares that he derived all his knowledge from Overall. He is also celebrated by Smith for his distinguished wisdom, erudition, and piety. In the controversy about predestination and grace, which in his time divided the reformed churches, he held a middle opinion, inclining somewhat to Arminianism. He seems indeed to have paved the way for the reception of that doctrine in England, where it was generally embraced a few years afterwards, chiefly by the authority and influence of Archbishop Laud. Overall cultivated a particular friendship with Gerard Vossius and Grotius, and was much grieved to see the love of peace, and the projects of the latter to obtain it, so ill repaid. He himself laboured heartily to settle the differences in Holland, upon what is known by the name of the Quinquarticular Controversy; as appears in part by his letters to the two learned correspondents just mentioned, some of which are printed in the Episiolae Praestantium Virorum.

This bishop is known in England chiefly by his Convocation Book, of which Burnet gives the following account: “This book was wrote on the subject of government, the divine institution of which was very positively asserted. It was read in convocation, and passed by that body, in order to the publishing of it, in opposition to the principles [7:16:679]laid down in the famous book of Parsons the Jesuit, published under the name of Doleman. But King James did not like a convocation entering into such a theory of politics; so he discouraged the printing of it, especially since, in order to justify the owning of the United Provinces, who had lately thrown off the Spanish yoke, to be a lawful government, it was laid down, that when a change of government was brought to a thorough settlement, it was then to be owned and submitted to, as a work of the providence of God. Here it slept, till Archbishop Sancroft, who had got the book into his own hands, and not observing the L¢t-mentioned passage in it, resolved to publish it, in the beginning of King William’s reign, as an authentic declaration which the Church of England had made in the point of non-resistance. Accordingly it was published in quarto, as well as licensed, by him, a very few days before he was under suspension for not taking the oaths.