Benjamin Whichcote is best known as the founder of the school of Cambridge Platonists, which flourished during the Interregnum and Restoration periods. Besides Whichcote, the movement included John Smith, Nathaniel Culverwel, John Worthington, Henry More, and Ralph Cudworth. Among these colleagues, More and Cudworth were the most prolific. By contrast, Whichcote published little during his lifetime and is best remembered through transcriptions of his sermons, which were made by auditors and published posthumously.

Whichcote's exact birthday is under dispute, but John Tillotson, who preached his funeral oration, gives 11 March 1609 as his natal day, and that choice seems probable. He was born to an "ancient and honorable family," the sixth son of Christopher and Elizabeth Fox Whichcote of Stoke-on-Tern Shropshire. Virtually nothing is known about his early life, but his matriculation at Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1626 would seem to indicate a strong penchant toward Puritanism on his part or...