John Bale

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John Bale bigraphy, stories - Anglican bishop in Ireland

John Bale : biography

21 November 1495 – 1563

John Bale (21 November 1495 – November 1563) was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English (on the subject of King John), and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being dispersed. His unhappy disposition and habit of quarreling earned him the nickname "bilious Bale".

Outline of his life

He was born at Cove, near Dunwich in Suffolk.The core of this article is taken from the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 (see ). A short biographical outline is in Alfred W. Pollard (Ed.), English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1914), 218-219. See also Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. At the age of twelve he joined the Carmelite friars at Norwich, removing later to the house of "Holme", (possibly the Carmelite priory at Hulne near Alnwick). Later he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, and took his degree of B.D. in 1529.

He became the last Prior of the Ipswich Carmelite house, elected in 1533.B. Zimmerman, 1899, ‘The White Friars at Ipswich,’ Proc. Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 10 Part 2, 199. He abandoned his monastic vocation, and got married, saying, "that I might never more serve so execrable a beast, I took to wife the faithful Dorothy." He obtained the living of Thorndon, Suffolk, but in 1534 was summoned before the Archbishop of York for a sermon against the invocation of saints preached at Doncaster, and afterwards before John Stokesley, Bishop of London, but he escaped through the powerful protection of Thomas Cromwell, whose notice he is said to have attracted by his miracle plays.

In these plays Bale denounced the monastic system and its supporters in unrestrained language and coarse imagery. The prayer of Infidelitas which opens the second act of his Three Laws is an example of his profane parody. These somewhat brutal productions were intended to impress popular feeling, and Cromwell found in him an invaluable instrument. When Cromwell fell from favour in 1540, Bale fled with his wife and children to Flanders. He returned on the accession of King Edward VI, and received the living of Bishopstoke, Hampshire, being promoted in 1552 to the Irish see of Ossory. He refused to be consecrated by the Roman Catholic rites of the Irish church, and won his point, though the Dean of Dublin made a protest against the revised office during the ceremony. He also quarreled bitterly with the aged and respected judge Thomas St. Lawrence, who travelled to Kilkenny to urge the people to reject his innovations.

When the accession of Queen Mary inaugurated a violent reaction in matters of religion, he was forced to get out of the country again. He tried to escape to Scotland, but on the voyage was captured by a Dutch man-of-war, which was driven by bad weather into St Ives, Cornwall. Bale was arrested on suspicion of treason, but soon released. At Dover he had another narrow escape, but he eventually made his way to the Netherlands and thence to Frankfurt and Basel. During his exile he devoted himself to writing. After his return, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, he received (1560) a prebendal stall at Canterbury, where he died and was buried in the cathedral.

Mysteries, Miracle Plays, Kynge Johan

John Bale attacked his enemies with vehemence and scurrility, much of which was directed strongly and forcibly against the Roman Catholic Church and its writers: but this cavill does not significantly diminish the value of his contributions to literature. (The Roman Catholic sympathiser and antiquary Anthony Wood, a man of "uncouth manners" and a condemned libeller, described him as "foul-mouthed Bale" a century afterwards.) Of his mysteries and miracle plays only five have been preserved, but the titles of the others, quoted by himself in his Catalogus, show that they were animated by the same political and religious aims. The Three Laws of Nature, Moses and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharisees and Papystes most wickedPrinted in Anglia, Bd. v.: source cited in Pollard 1914, 219. (produced in 1538 and again in 1562) was a morality play. The direction for the dressing of the parts is instructive: "Let Idolatry be decked like an old witch, Sodomy like a monk of all sects, Ambition like a bishop, Covetousness like a Pharisee or spiritual lawyer, False Doctrine like a popish doctor, and Hypocrisy like a gray friar." A Tragedye; or enterlude manifesting the chief promyses of God unto Man,Printed in Robert Dodsley, Select Collection of Old Plays (12 vols., 1744; 2nd edition with notes by Isaac Reed, 12 vols., 1780; 4th edition, by William Carew Hazlitt, 1874–1876, 15 vols.), volume 1. The Temptacyon of our Lorde,A. B. Grosart (Ed.), 1870, Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library, vol. i. and A brefe Comedy or Enterlude of Johan Baptystes preachynge in the Wyldernesse, etc.Harleian Miscellany volume i. were all written in 1538.