BIDDLE, GIOVANNI. — English Protestant, called the “Father of English Unitarians,” b. at Wotton-Under-Edge (Gloucestershire), d. in London in 1662. After completing his studies at Oxford, he returned to his native town and it is said that, even before reading Socinian books, through private study and interpretation of Holy Scripture alone, he became convinced that there was only one Person in God. He then taught and published some antitrinitarian writings. In the troubled period in which he lived, when Anglicans, Baptists, and Puritan-Presbyterians were at odds with one another and all professed Trinitarian doctrines, his writings and sermons provoked persecution from all sides. He was imprisoned in his hometown in 1645 and from that year until his death he had to struggle constantly. He suffered repeated imprisonments and some of his works (Twelve Arguments etc. [1647], Confession of Faith and Testimonies [1648], and Twofold Catechism [1654]) were publicly burned by the executioner’s order; he himself was sentenced to death, from which Cromwell saved him by exiling him, with a good pension, to the Scilly Isles, 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 not a friend obtained his release shortly before he died.
His followers, first called Biddleites, then for some time Socinians, and also Arians, still exist in England under the name of Unitarians.