Michael Honeywood
Michael Honywood was born in the Parish of St Helens London in October 1596. He was the sixth of nine children. His parents were well to do, his mother Elizabeth being the daughter of a Knight.
He must have been a precocious scholar, as he graduated BA at the age of 19 in January 1615 from Christ’s College Cambridge and then become a fellow of the College in 1618 after further graduating MA through the patronage of the Queen of Bohemia! He fell into the orbit of Richard Crakanthorpe an Oxford radical puritan logician assisting with his works on logic. In 1640 he obtained the lucrative in absentia living at Kegworth.
Pretty much until the start of the Civil War he was a solid college man taking part in various college management roles until he seems to have effectively exiled himself in 1642 to Utrecht in the Low Countries. Here he chiefly concentrated his efforts and resources on expanding his growing collection of books with his friend Sanford. He refused all enticements to return to England until the Restoration including the Mastership of his college and the continuation of his living in Kegworth.
Once back though advancement quickly followed with his installation as Dean of Lincoln on the 12th October 1660. Honywood never married but the Cathedral hugely benefited from his generosity with his extensive book collection forming the foundation of the Wren designed library which was constructed at his own cost (£780-!)
As a man we have the mixed thumbnail sketch by Samuel Pepys himself “a good nature, but a very weak man; yet a Deane and a man in great esteem” and “a simple priest… though a well-meaning man”. John Walker described him as “a Holy and Humble Man, and a Living Library of Learning”
Whilst Dean he was engaged with the restoration of the substantially compromised fabric of the Cathedral and the reestablishment of Choral Services, which proved to be a considerable challenge because of the paucity of skilled musicians in the Restoration period. Dutch Organist Andrea Hecht was recruited, and attempts were made to employ the redundant choir of burned out St Paul’s Cathedral.
Honywood died at the then grand old age of 85 in the Deanery on the 7th December 1681.