Christopher Potter

Christopher Potter (1591 – 3 March 1646) was an English academic and clergyman, Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford, controversialist and prominent supporter of William Laud. Life He was born in Westmoreland, the nephew of Barnaby Potter. He matriculated at Queen's on 11 July 1606, aged 15, having entered the college in the previous Easter term. He was elected taberdar (pauper puer) on 29 October 1609. He graduated B.A. on 30 April 1610 and M.A. on 8 July 1613, became chaplain on 5 July 1613, and fellow on 22 March 1614–15. He was magister puerorum in 1620, and senior bursar in 1622; graduated B.D. and received a preacher's licence on 9 March 1621, and proceeded D.D. on 17 February 1627. He was in early life a follower of Henry Airay, opponent of Laud, and held a lectureship at Abingdon where he was a popular preacher. On his uncle's resignation of the headship of Queen's (17 June 1626), he was elected Provost. He now attached himself to Laud, and was made chaplain in ordinary to Charles I. In the first year of his provostship, with the assistance of Sir Thomas Coventry, Viscount Doncaster, and Sir George Goring, vice-chamberlain to Queen Henrietta Maria, he obtained the advowson of three rectories and three vicarages in Hampshire for the college. He himself received the rectory of Strathfieldsaye in 1627, and after the death of William Cox in 1632 was made precentor of Chichester. He received the rectory of Bletchington, Oxfordshire, in 1631. During Laud's chancellorship of the university, Potter was a frequent correspondent. He was a disciplinarian in his college, and instituted expositions of the creed on Sundays in chapel and English sermons on Thursdays. In 1631, on the death of John Rawlinson, principal of St. Edmund Hall, he successfully asserted the rights of his college against the claim of the chancellor to nominate a principal, and Laud admitted and confirmed the right.