BIDDLE, GIOVANNI. – English Protestant, called the “Father of the English Unitarians,” b. at Wotton-Under-Edge (Gloucestershire), d. in London in 1662. Having completed his studies at Oxford, he returned to his native town, and it is said that, even before reading Socinian books, through study alone and his private interpretation of Sacred Scripture, he became convinced that there was only one Person in God. He therefore taught and published several anti-Trinitarian writings. In the troubled age in which he lived, when Anglicans, Baptists, and Puritan Presbyterians were fighting among themselves, while all professed Trinitarian doctrines, his writings and sermons brought persecution upon him from every side. He was imprisoned in his native town in 1645, and from that year until his death he had to struggle against everyone. He suffered repeated imprisonments, and some of his writings (Twelve Arguments etc. [1647], Confession of faith and Testimonies [1648], and Twofold Catechism [1654]) were publicly burned by the executioner on Parliament’s orders; he himself was condemned to death, from which Cromwell rescued him by exiling him, though with a good pension, to the Isles of Scilly, where he remained for three years, until 1655. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he was again accused and imprisoned by the Anglicans in London in 1662, and would have remained there until his death had a friend of his not succeeded in securing his release shortly before he died.
His followers, first called Biddleans, then for a time Socinians, and also Arians, still exist in England under the name of Unitarians.