Robert Harris (1581–1658) was an English clergyman, known as a Puritan preacher, member of the Westminster Assembly, and President of Trinity College, Oxford.
[4] He matriculated, aged 15, at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, 10 June 1597, when his relative Robert Lyster aka Lyson was principal.
[5] Harris won fame as a preacher at St. Paul's Cathedral, St. Saviour's Southwark, and other London churches, as well as in his own neighbourhood.
On 25 April 1642 he was chosen one of the holy divines to be consulted by Parliament, and on the occasion of a public fast (25 May) preached before the House of Commons.
After the battle of Edgehill the royalist troopers quartered at Hanwell turned out Harris and his family, and he was finally ejected from his living and obliged to go to London (September 1642).
[5] On 12 April 1648 the chancellor of the University of Oxford, Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, admitted Harris to the degree of D.D., and at the same time he was made President of Trinity College in the place of Hannibal Potter, whom he had assisted to eject.
[5][8] Durham described Harris thus:- "Dr Harris was a man of admirable prudence, profound judgement, eminent gifts and graces, furnished with all the singular qualifications which might render him a complete man, a wise governor, a profitable preacher and a good Christian"[8] This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bradley, Emily Tennyson (1891).