; PRINTED FOR J. NICHOLS AND SON; F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON; T. PAYNE; 1814. A NEW AND GENERAL BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. HAAK (THEODORE), who is said to have first suggested the weekly meetings of the royal society, and was one of its first fellows when established after the restoration, was born in 1605, at Newhausen, near Worms in the Palatinate, and educated at home. In 1625 he came to Oxford, and studied there about half a year, whence he went for the same time to Cambridge. He then visited some of the universities abroad, but returned to Oxford in 1629, and became a commoner of Gloucester-hall (now Worcester college). Here he remained three years, but without taking a degree, and, as Wood says, was made a deacon by Dr. Joseph Hall, the celebrated bishop of Exeter. He does not, however, appear to have proceeded farther in ecclesiastical ordination, and both in his translation of the "Dutch Annotations," and in the lists of the royal society, we find him afterwards styled "Theodore Haak, Esq." In the time of the German wars he was appointed one of the procurators to receive the benevolence money, which was raised in several dioceses in England to be transmitted to Germany, which he used to say "was a deacon's work." When the rebellion broke out in this country, he appears to have favoured the interests of parliament. In 1657 he published in 2 vols. folio, what is called the "Dutch Annotations upon the whole Bible," which is a translation of the Dutch Bible, ordered by the synod of Dort, and first published in 1637. Wood says that the Dutch translators were assisted in this undertaking by bishops Carleton, Davenant, Hall, and other English divines, who were VOL. XVII. B |