John Overall

Map of England | First Westminster Company

(1561–1619)

The translator John Overall is pictured in this Wenceslas Hollar print with raised eyebrows, a convention meant to suggest intellectual curiosity. Overall was a regius professor of divinity at Cambridge, a chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. His preaching was not particularly successful, however, because he found it awkward to speak publicly in English instead of Latin. After he discussed predestination at the Hampton Court conference, Overall revised the Anglican catechism on the topic, making changes that persisted until the 1970s.

All this was overshadowed in the public mind, however, by his ill-fated marriage at the age of 44 to Anne Orwell, a young beauty “bosom’d like a swan,” according to a poem of the day. During the translation of the King James Bible, she ran away with a Yorkshire squire, as commemorated in another verse: “The Dean of St. Paul’s did search for his wife / And where do you think he found her? / Even upon Sir John Selby’s bed, / As flat as any flounder.” Anne was brought home, but little more is known of the Overall marriage.

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