Giles Wigginton

Giles Wigginton (fl. 1564 – 1597) was an English clergyman who became a fringe religious activist towards the end of the sixteenth century.

Life Wigginton was born at Oundle in Northamptonshire and was educated at the Oundle School and the University of Cambridge, under the patronage of Sir Walter Mildmay. He matriculated as a sizar of Trinity College in October 1564, and in 1566 was elected a scholar. He proceeded B.A. in 1569, and was subsequently elected a Fellow, over opposition from the Master John Whitgift who disliked his Puritan views. He commenced M.A. in 1572, having studied divinity, Greek, and Hebrew.

On 3 September 1579 Wigginton was instituted to the vicarage of Sedbergh, then in Yorkshire, on the presentation of Trinity College, but found his Calvinism unpopular. In 1581 Edwin Sandys, archbishop of York, wrote concerning Wigginton to his diocesan William Chaderton, bishop of Chester, remarking ‘He laboureth not to build, but to pull down, and by what means he can to overthrow the state ecclesiastical’ In 1584, when in London, he was appointed to preach before the judges in the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West. Whitgift, by then archbishop of Canterbury, sent a pursuivant to Wigginton at night while he was in bed, to forbid him to preach and require him to give a bond for his appearance at Lambeth the next day. On his appearance before Whitgift he was tendered an oath ex officio to answer certain articles unknown to him. Wigginton refused, and Whitgift committed him to the Gatehouse Prison, where he remained for over two months. On his release he was admonished not to preach in the province of Canterbury without further licence.

Later in 1586, while visiting London, he was apprehended by one of Whitgift's pursuivants, brought before the archbishop at Lambeth, and, on refusing the oath again, was committed to the White Lion prison, where he was treated harshly. He was removed to another prison, and, on failing through illness to obey a citation of the archbishop, he was sentenced to deprivation and degradation, in spite of the intercession of Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick and Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon. While in prison he composed A Treatise on Predestination. He was also the author of Giles Wigginton his Catechisme (London, 1589), and of several theological treatises in manuscript that came into the possession of Dawson Turner.