Welcome back to our series illuminating the scholarly giants behind the 1611 King James Bible. If Part 1 introduced the overseers—those vigilant guardians like Richard Bancroft who enforced the sacred 15 Rules—we now plunge into the 1st Westminster Company, the powerhouse crew tasked with Genesis through 2 Kings, the foundational bedrock of Scripture. Convening in the ancient halls of Westminster Abbey amid the clatter of Parliament nearby, these 12 men  brought unmatched erudition to the task. High Church loyalists to the bone, they championed episcopacy and liturgical beauty, yet their work pulses with prophetic fire. Every verse here endured the famed 14 reviews, emerging crystalline.

The Dream Team: Pedigrees and Passions

**Lancelot Andrewes **, the undisputed maestro, was Dean of Westminster and later Bishop of Chichester, Ely, Peterborough, and Winchester. A Cambridge prodigy , he mastered 12 languages—Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Chaldean, Arabic, and more. His Preces Privatae  moved monarchs like Charles I; John Donne called him “the best preacher in England.” Andrewes led revisions, his prayers infusing Genesis’s grandeur. Anecdote: He once debated Jesuits in six tongues, silencing them—fit for Babel’s tower.

**John Overall **, Dean of St. Paul’s and Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge , was a logic titan whose Summa grappled with predestination. Puritan-leaning yet episcopal, he anchored doctrinal debates.

**Hadrian Saravia **, the Huguenot refugee from Arras, fled Spanish Inquisition for England. BA/MA Cambridge , he authored De Officiis Sacerdotis defending bishops. Queen Elizabeth dubbed him her “best foreign scholar”; his patristic depth shaped Exodus’s priestly rites.

**William Bedwell **, the Orientalist wizard, pioneered Arabic studies . He decoded the Mishnah and Samaritan Pentateuch, gifting his library to Oxford. Bedwell’s Hebraisms lit Leviticus like menorah flames.

Rounding out: John Layfield ; Robert Tighe ; Richard Clarke and Francis Burleigh ; John King ; Richard Thompson and George King ; Richard Harmer .

Anecdotes from the Abbey: Sweat, Scholarship, and the Supernatural

Picture them: Andrewes, frail but fierce, pacing cloisters reciting Hebrew psalms. Legend holds he rose at 4 a.m. for devotions in original tongues. Bedwell, eccentric hermit, lived in an almskeeper’s cell piled with manuscripts, once trekking to Hebrew rabbis in Amsterdam. The company faced plague interruptions , yet reconvened, their debates echoing like thunder over Sinai. One tale: Saravia, homesick for Flanders, wept translating the plagues—his exile mirrored Israel’s.

Their Anglican fervor shone in retaining “bishop” , yet Puritan precision honed prophecies . High Church polish met evangelical zeal, birthing Genesis’s cosmic sweep: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Legacy: Foundations Forged in Fire

This company’s output—over a third of the OT—underpinned revivals from Whitefield to Spurgeon. Andrewes preached James I’s coronation; their words crowned his reign. Reviewed 14 times under Bancroft’s eye, these verses stand unassailable.

Next: 2nd Westminster – Puritan Powerhouse. Stay tuned—the symphony builds. Soli Deo Gloria.