Deaths on May 4

Arthur Lake, English bishop and scholar (b. 1569)

Arthur Lake (September 1569 – 4 May 1626) was Bishop of Bath and Wells and a translator of the King James Version of The Bible.

Arthur Lake was born in Southampton in September 1569 the son of Almeric Lake, a minor customs official. He attended King Edward VI School, Southampton, until he was twelve and on 28 December 1581 he was elected a scholar of Winchester College. He stayed at Winchester until he was eighteen when he became a scholar of New College, Oxford. He matriculated in July 1588, was elected a fellow of the college in 1589, accepted the degree of BA on 4 June 1591 and MA on 3 May 1595. He was presented to the rectory of Havant, Hampshire in 1599. He resigned his fellowship at Oxford in 1600, and on 16 June was admitted a fellow of Winchester College. In 1601 he became rector of Hambledon (near Havant), and of Chilcomb, near Winchester, in 1603.

He was awarded a DD at Oxford and in 1609 he may have been one of the clergymen charged with editing the new English translation of the Bible commissioned by James I for whom his brother Sir Thomas acted as a secretary. There is no unequivocal evidence for this but the initials "AL" appear throughout the notes of the General Committee of Review and no other candidate has been proposed.