Christopher Potter (provost)

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.

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.

He had now attracted notice as a prominent Arminian, and was attacked in a violent sermon written under the influence probably of John Prideaux.

He also engaged in controversy the Jesuit Edward Knott over his work Charity Mistaken, by the king's command, in a pamphlet.

A second edition (London, 1634) was revised by Laud, whose suggested alterations later formed one of the charges brought against him at his trial.

To Knott's reply, Mercy and Truth, William Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants was an answer, and Potter was asked by Laud to revise the latter work.

He had been promoted, by Laud's influence, as Dean of Worcester in 1636, and he received the rectory of Great Haseley, Oxfordshire, 1642.