Michael Honywood

He took part in college management, and helped forward the erection of the new Fellows' Building, completed in 1644, by advancing money, which was not repaid till 27 August 1649.

[4] In 1640 Honywoood was appointed rector of the college living of St Andrew's Church, Kegworth, Leicestershire, but he did not reside there; and when the First English Civil War threatened Cambridge at the beginning of 1642, he crossed to the Low Countries.

The sectaries in his parish gave him some trouble, and in 1667 Richard Gibson, a Quaker who refused to pay his tithes, was thrown into prison, and was detained there for several years at Honywood's suit.

He set to work to repair the damage done to Lincoln Cathedral and its precincts, and re-established the long-suspended choral service, finding money for both from his own purse.

Friends included Herbert Thorndike, Humphrey Henchman and George Morley, and Samuel Pepys, who called him "a simple priest, though a good well-meaning man" (Diary, 6 August 1664).

[1] Honywood's major work contribution to Lincoln Cathedral was to spend £780 of his own money on the library which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, on the site of the ruined north walk of the cloister.

[6] The collection contained (2014) a series of rare seventeenth-century tracts, including the first issue of John Milton's Lycidas, his Tetrachordon, and Smectymnuus.

Early printed books of William Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde and others, which originally formed part of Honywood's library, were sold by the chapter at the suggestion of Thomas Frognall Dibdin, with his Lincolne Nosegaie.