Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Duport, John
DUPORT, JOHN (d. 1617), biblical scholar, descended from an ancient family at Caen in Normandy, which came into Leicestershire in the reign of Henry IV, was the eldest son of Thomas Duport of Sheepshed in that county, by his wife, Cornelia Norton of Kent (pedigree in Nichols, Leicestershire, vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 1023). Admitted of Jesus College, Cambridge, he had become M.A. and fellow there by 1580, in which year he was one of the university proctors and rector of Harleton, Cambridgeshire. He was afterwards instituted to the rectory of Medbourne, and that of Husband's Bosworth in his native county of Leicester. On 24 Dec. 1583 he was presented by Aylmer, bishop of London, to the sinecure rectory of Fulham, Middlesex; succeeded Henry Harvey, LL.D., 29 April 1585, in the precentorship of St. Paul's, London, and in 1590, being then D.D., became master of Jesus College. He was four times elected vice-chancellor of the university, in 1593, 1594, 1601, and 1609, in which last year he succeeded to the seventh prebendal stall in the church of Ely (Bentham, Ely, 2nd edit., p. 261). Duport, who died about or soon after Christmas, 1617, was one of the translators of the Bible (1611), and is recorded among the benefactors of his college as having bequeathed to it the perpetual advowson of the church of Harleton. His will, bearing date 21 Oct. 1617, was proved in P. C. C. 19 Feb. 1617–18 (registered 14, Meade). He married Rachel, daughter of Richard Cox, bishop of Ely, by whom he had John, baptised 26 April 1596, died young; Richard, baptised 4 Sept. 1597, a graduate of Cambridge; Thomas, whom his father desired to be bound apprentice to some business in London: James [q. v.]; Eudocia, baptised 10 Nov. 1592, married Samuel Hill, D.D., and was buried at Medbourne 25 Dec. 1614; Cornelia (Mrs. Jane); Rachel, baptised 22 Oct. 1598; and Luce, baptised 13 Sept. 1604, died unmarried 6 Feb. 1665, aged 61 (epitaph in Lansd. MS. 986, f. 230 b; Le Neve, Monumenta Anglicana). Mrs. Duport was buried at Medbourne on 19 July 1618.
[Nichols's Leicestershire, vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 468, 470 n., 718, 721, vol. iii. pt. ii. pp. 1015, 1023; Fuller's Worthies (1662), Leicestershire, p. 134; Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xii. 502; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), i. 469; Strype's Annals (8vo), iv. 105, 229; Strype's Life of Whitgift (8vo), ii. 57, 231, 235, 248, 257, 268, 437.]