John Davenant (c. 1576-1641), was a graduate of Cambridge. He was admitted to Queen’s College, Cambridge in 1587 and had a distinguished career there. At the age of thirty-three he was awarded his D.D. and was made Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity in the University. He was elected President of Queens’ College in 1614. Davenant was Rector of Leyke (Leake) in Nottinghamshire and then for a few months Vicar of Hockington (Oakington), Cambridgeshire.
A member of the Church of England delegation to the Synod of Dort (1618), King James I later appointed him Bishop of Salisbury in 1621, a position he was to retain until his death in 1641. He authored the commentary on Colossians (originally written in Latin) in the Trust’s Geneva series, in which a ‘Life of Bishop Davenant’ by the editor and translator Josiah Allport is included.