He was born at Seymour, in the district of Cleveland, Yorkshire. He went to Cambridge as a sizar of Magdalene College in 1616, moved to Peterhouse in 1618, and gained his BA in 1619 and MA in 1623. After being a schoolmaster and holding two curacies, he became rector of St Martin's Orgar in London in 1628. There he became involved in the dispute between the London clergy and the citizens about the city tithes, and compiled a treatise on the subject, which was printed in Brewster's Collectanea (1752). His conduct in this matter displayed his ability, but his determination to collect ecclesiastical dues was remembered in 1641 in the articles brought against him in parliament, which seem to have led to the sequestration of his considerable assets. A simultaneous charge of Popery had little substance, nor did that of insulting the members of parliament for the city.
In 1642 he was imprisoned; afterwards, he took refuge in Oxford, and ultimately returned to London to the house of William Fuller, dean of Ely, whose daughter Jane was his second wife.
In this retirement he devoted himself to Oriental studies and carried through his great work, a Polyglot Bible which was intended to be more complete, cheaper and have better critical notes than any previous work of the kind. The proposals for the Polyglot appeared in 1652, and the book itself came out in six great folios in 1657, having been printing for five years. Nine languages are used: Hebrew, Chaldee, Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Greek and Latin. Among his collaborators were James Ussher, John Lightfoot and Edward Pococke, Edmund Castell, Abraham Wheelocke and Patrick Young, Thomas Hyde and Thomas Greaves. The undertaking was supported by liberal subscriptions, and Walton's political opinions did not lose him the help of the Commonwealth; the paper used was duty-free, and the interest of Oliver Cromwell in the work was acknowledged in the original preface, part of which was afterwards cancelled to make way for more loyal expressions towards the monarchy following the Restoration. Walton himself benefited from the Restoration. He was consecrated Bishop of Chester in December 1660. In the following spring he was one of the commissioners at the Savoy Conference, but took little part in the business. In the autumn of 1661 he paid a short visit to his diocese, and returning to London he died.
Although Walton was indebted to his helpers, the Polyglot Bible is a monument to his hard work and organisational skill, and the Prolegomena show judgment as well as learning. The same qualities appear in Walton's Considerator Considered (1659), a reply to the Considerations of John Owen, who thought that the accumulation of material for the revision of the received text tended to atheism. Among Walton's works must also be mentioned an Introductio ad lectionem linguarum orientalium (1654; 2nd ed., 1655), meant to prepare the way for the Polyglot.
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.