William Alabaster, born at Hadleigh in Suffolk, was a Fellow of Trinity College. His University career is remarkable for his having kept a Greek Act with Francis Dillingham, B.D. of St. John's College. Having been appointed chaplain to Robert Earl of Essex, he attended him in his voyage to Calais on a projected expedition to assist Henry IV. against the League, in the year 1591. While in France, he was induced to change his church and to become a Roman Catholick; he soon, however, became dissatisfied with his new persuasion and returned to his former opinions. In the preface to his work entitled “Ecce sponsus venit,” he relates that, certain doctrines of his having become obnoxious to the Court of Rome, he was enticed to that city and imprisoned there by authority of the inquisition; on his liberation, he was confined to the city-walls, but escaping at the peril of his life he returned to England, and soon after became Prebendary of St. Paul's and Rector of Hatfield, in Hertfordshire. He died about A. D. 1640.

He was a great Hebrew scholar and skilled in Cabalistic learning, which he displayed in various discussions on the mystical meaning that he supposed to be involved in the words of Scripture; especially in his clerum at Cambridge on commencing Doctor of Divinity, when he took for his text the first words of the first book of Chronicles “Adam, Sheth, Enosh;” the mystical meaning of these he supposed to be, “Man is put or placed for trouble.”