Walter Haddon

Walter Haddon LL.D. (1515–1572) was an English civil lawyer, much involved in church and university affairs under Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth I. He was a University of Cambridge humanist and reformer, and was highly reputed in his time as a Latinist. He sat as an MP during the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. His controversial exchange with the Portuguese historian Jerónimo Osório attracted international attention partly on account of the scholarly reputations of the protagonists.

Early life Walter Haddon was the son of William Haddon and Dorothy Young, the daughter of John Young of Croome d'Abitot, Worcestershire. He was the maternal half-brother of Francis Saunders and the brother of James Haddon. Haddon was educated at Eton College under Richard Cox, and in 1533 he was elected from Eton to King's College, Cambridge. He declined an invitation to Cardinal College, at Oxford, and proceeded B.A. at Cambridge in 1537. He was one of the scholars who about this period attended the Greek lectures read in the university by Thomas Smith. He commenced M.A. in 1541, and read lectures on civil law for two or three years.

Under Edward VI He was created Doctor of both laws at Cambridge in 1549, and served the office of vice-chancellor in 1549–1550. A reformer in religion, with Matthew Parker, then master of Benet College, he acted as an executor of his friend Martin Bucer, and both delivered orations at his funeral in March 1551. He was appointed Regius Professor of civil law, in accordance with a petition from the university, drawn up by his friend Roger Ascham. Haddon and John Cheke were chiefly responsible for the reform of the ecclesiastical laws, prepared under Thomas Cranmer's superintendence, and with the advice of Peter Martyr, in accordance with an Act of Parliament of 1549. The Act directed that the scheme should be completed by 1552, but the work was not finished within the specified time. A bill introduced into the parliament of 1552 for the renewal of the commission was not carried, and Edward's death put an end to the scheme, but Haddon and Cheke's Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum did eventually appear in print in 1571.

In 1557 he translated into Latin a supplicatory letter to Pope Paul IV from the parliament of England, to dissuade him from revoking Cardinal Pole's authority as legate. In spite of his own Protestant opinions, he admired the learning of Bishop Cuthbert Tunstal, and composed the epitaph placed on his tomb when he died that year. On 20 June he was appointed one of the commissioners for the visitation of the University of Cambridge and the college of Eton; and on 18 September following the queen granted him a pension. He was in the commission for administering oaths to ecclesiastics (20 October 1559); was also one of the ecclesiastical commissioners; and received from his friend, Archbishop Parker, the office of judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

Osório, now bishop of Silves, published a reply in 1567. Haddon began a rejoinder, but this was left unfinished at the time of his death, and it was ultimately completed and published by John Foxe. There appeared, probably at Antwerp, without date, Chorus alternatim canentium, a satire in verse on the controversy between Haddon and Osório, attached to a caricature in which Haddon, Bucer, and Pietro Martire Vermigli are represented as dogs drawing a car on which Osório is seated in triumph. Until the Great Fire of London, there was a monument to his memory, with a Latin inscription preserved by Weever.

He married, first, Margaret, daughter of Sir John Clere of Ormesby, Norfolk, by whom he had a son, Clere Haddon, who was drowned in the river Cam, probably in 1571; and secondly Anne, daughter of Sir Henry Sutton, who survived him and remarried Sir Henry Cobham, whom she also survived.