Charles Trice Martin

“ BELCHIAM, THOMAS (1508–1537) , a Franciscan friar of the convent at Greenwich, was imprisoned, with others of his brethren, for refusing to take the oath of the royal supremacy, and declaring the king (Henry VIII) to be a heretic. He wrote a sermon on the text, 'Behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses' (Matt. xi. 8) , in which he lashed the vices of the court and the avarice and inconstancy of the clergy. At the intercession of Thomas Wriothesley afterwards lord chancellor and earl of Southampton) , some of the friars were released, but Belchiam was excepted. ”

“ When Latimer was preaching at Cambridge in 1529, in favour of an English bible and other religious innovations, Buckenham was one of his principal opponents, and, in answer to Latimer's sermon on the cards, preached on ‘Christmas dice,’ using the terms cinq and quater as suggestive of the four doctors of the church and five texts of scripture, but did not succeed in silencing him (see Demaus, Tyndale, 431) . His adherence to the papal supremacy and the old form of religion rendered it expedient for him to leave England. ”

“ While in the Turk's countries the travellers had disguised themselves as merchants in alum. Soon after Carew's return war broke out between England and France, and he served both by land and sea. In the campaign of 1544 he joined the king's army with one hundred foot, apparelled in black at his own expense, his elder brother, George, being lieutenant of the horse till he was taken prisoner at Landrecy. Sir George was not long in captivity, and in the following year was in command of the Mary Rose when she foundered going out of Portsmouth harbour to attack the French fleet. ”

“ GAIMAR, GEOFFREY (fl. 1140?) , wrote a history of England in French verse, extending from the time of King Arthur's successors to the death of William II. His errors in interpreting the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Chronicle,' on which most of his history is based, render it probable that he was a Norman by birth, and he may have derived his name from a suburb of Caen, anciently known as Gaimara, and now Gémare. ”

“ He sympathised with More from principle, as well as for friendship's sake, and was courageous enough to help Friar Peto, who had fled to the Low Countries after preaching a violent sermon against King Henry VIII. Cardinal Pole speaks of him in much the same terms as More does, as 'a special benefactor of all catholic and good persons, whom I will not leave unnamed, for worthy is he of name, and I doubt not but his name is in the Book of Life. ”

“ According to the best authority, the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ Hengist and Horsa arrived in 449 at Ebbsfleet in the parish of Minster in the Isle of Thanet ‘in aid of the Britons,’ with a few followers in three ships. Bede, who wrote nearly three centuries after the event, following a vague hint of Gildas, asserts that they came by invitation of Vortigern, king of South Britain, to aid in repelling the invasion of the Picts and Scots. Like the ‘Chronicle,’ Bede gives the year of their coming as 449. ”

“ In 1526 he was appointed chief porter of Calais, a post of which he had already held the reversion for some ten years, and the remainder of his life was spent in the discharge of his duties as porter, and as commissioner of sewers for the marshes of Calais, which included supervision of the sea-banks. One of his duties, not mentioned in his patent, was to keep the king supplied with artichokes, fresh vegetables and fruit being a scarce luxury in England at that time. ”

“ Her sister Nuts, after having a natural son by Henry I, married a Norman named Stephen, whose son, Robert. Fitz-Stephen, was one of the first English invaders of Ireland, and obtained a grant of half the kingdom of Cork from Henry II. Adam's great-great-grandson, William, baron of Carew, married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Robert Fits-Stephen. It was, however, been shown by Sir John Maclean that Robert Fits-Stephen died without issue, and that William, baron of Carew or de Carrio, was descended from Gerald Fitz-Walter de Windsor, first husband of Nesta. ”

“ In 1520 he was acting as secretary to William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, whom he served in that capacity till the archbishop's death in August 1532. Within a month afterwards the king (Henry VIII) took him into his service as one of the royal chaplains, and on 14 Oct. he signs a letter to the king as clerk of the council, a post to which he had quite recently been appointed. His former master, the archbishop, speaks of his ‘approved fidelity and virtue,’ and he soon was equally high in the favour of Cromwell and Cranmer, whose views on ecclesiastical polity he thoroughly adopted. ”

“ The election was confirmed on 26 Sept., and a few days after Henry VIII visited the newly elected abbot and was hospitably entertained. He was probably of obscure birth, and a native of Faringdon, Berkshire. He was, however, a friend of Arthur Plantagenet, lord Lisle, the natural son of Edward IV, and received his stepson, James Basset, to be educated in the abbey school under his eye. His relations with the king, as far as recorded, were of the usual courteous character for a man in his position. ”

“ FITZROY, HENRY, Duke of Richmond (1519–1536) , was the son of Henry VIII and Elizabeth Blount, a lady in waiting on Queen Catherine of Arragon, daughter of John Blount, esq., who, according to Wood, came from Knevet in Shropshire, perhaps Kinlet, an old seat of the Blount family. His mother afterwards married Gilbert, son of Sir George Talboys of Goltho, Lincolnshire, and certain manors in that county and Yorkshire were assigned to her for life by act of parliament. ”

“ BALDWIN, JOHN (d. 1545) , chief justice of the common pleas, was a member of the Inner Temple, of which inn he was appointed reader in the autumn of 1516, at Easter 1524, and again in the autumn of 1531, while he twice filled the office of treasurer, in 1524 and 1530. In 1510 his name appears on the commission of the peace for Buckinghamshire, with which county he was connected throughout his life, acting on commissions of gaol delivery and subsidy, and for the assessment of the values of church property which formed the basis of the 'valor ecclesiasticus' of 1535. ”

“ HENGIST (d. 488) , joint-founder with his brother Horsa (d. 455) of the English kingdom of Kent, belonged to a leading family of the Jutes, settled in the peninsula of Jutland, where they held land as far south as the river Sley, which runs into the sea near Schleswig. In early traditions their ancestry is traced back to the gods. ”

“ In the last year of Henry VIII's reign Carew was sheriff of Devonshire; but marrying a Lincolnshire lady, Margaret, daughter of Sir William Skipworth, widow of George, lord Tailboys de Kyme, he went to reside on his wife's estates, till he was recalled by the news of the insurrection of 1549, caused by the issuing of the reformed Book of Common Prayer. ”

“ In 1532 he, with four other abbots, was commissioned by the king to hold a visitation of the whole Cistercian order, in place of the abbot of Chailly, who had been charged to undertake this duty by the head visitor and reformator of the order, but was not allowed to perform it personally, being a Frenchman. In 1534 he not only himself acknowledged the king as supreme head of the church, but by advice and threats prevailed upon many of his monks to do the same. ”

“ He was a patron and friend of learned men, more especially of those who had visited and studied in Italy. Thomas Starkey, Thomas Winter, Florence Volusenus, and others express their obligations to him. Sir Thomas More, in one of his last letters from the Tower, speaks of himself as having been for nearly forty years 'not a guest, but a continual nursling of the house of Bonvisi,' and styles Antonio the most faithful of his friends. ”

“ HAYDOCK, WILLIAM (d. 1537) , a monk of the Cistercian abbey of Whalley in Lancashire, was a younger son of William Haydock of Cottam Hall, near Preston, Lancashire, by Joan, daughter of William Heton of Heton. He was concerned, together with his abbot, John Pasleu, and a fellow-monk, John Eastgate, in the insurrection in the north of England of 1536, commonly known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. They were tried for this offence at the assizes at Lancaster in the following spring, and were, after conviction, sent back to Whalley for execution. ”

“ The articles alleged against Crome were denial of justification by works, the efficacy of masses for the dead and prayers to saints, and the non-necessity of truths not deduced from holy scripture. His answer was an argument that these articles were true and orthodox; but the king, averse to severity in his case, only ordered him to preach at St. Paul's Cross and read a recantation with a statement that he would be punished if hereafter convicted of a similar offence. ”

“ CAREW, Sir PETER (1514–1575) , soldier, was the second son of Sir William Carew of Ottery Mohun or Mohuns Ottery, Devonshire, who was the son of Sir Edmund Carew [q. v.] His brothers were George, who served in several military commands in the reign of Henry VIII, and Philip, of whom nothing is known but that he was a knight of Malta. Sir Peter was born at Ottery Mohun in 1514. ”

“ Pits styles him 'sacrae theologiae doctor,' but there is no record of his having taken a degree, either in Wood's 'Athenae Oxonienses' or in Cooper's 'Athenae Cantabrigienses.' He sat in the convocation which commenced in April 1528, and was one of the small minority who refused to sign the declaration that Henry VIII's marriage with Catherine was illegal, on the ground that the pope had no power of dispensation in such a case. ”

“ Crome was given time to answer, and having had some practice in the art of recantation made sufficient compliance to save himself from the stake. It was proposed that he, Rogers, and Bradford should be sent to Cambridge to discuss with orthodox scholars, as Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer had done at Oxford, but they refused, not expecting fair play. ”

“ If the statement of Maurice Chauncy, a contemporary of Batmanson's, that his successor Houghton, who was executed for refusing the oath of supremacy, died on 4 May 1535, ‘in the fifth year of his priorate,’ be correct, Batmanson must have resigned the office some months before his death. The character given of him varies with the opinions of the writer. Pits and Petre speak of his great learning and angelic life, while Bale calls him supercilious and arrogant, and fond of quarrelling, though he allows that he was a clear writer. ”

“ CROME, EDWARD (d. 1562) , protestant divine, was educated at Cambridge, taking the degrees of B.A. in 1503, M.A. in 1507, and D.D. in 1526. He was a fellow of Gonville Hall; but although his friend Archbishop Cranmer, also a Cambridge man, speaks of him as having been 'president of a college in Cambridge,' his name does not appear in the lists of heads. ”

“ His account of the reign of William II, of which he must have had personal knowledge, is of more value, but is not chronologically accurate. He gives an amusing description of the court held in the New Hall at Westminster at Whitsuntide 1099, and, in narrating the death of the Red King, hints that Walter Tirel was moved to murder his master in consequence of a bragging assertion of his intention to invade France. ”

“ Mary's Hostel, and was therefore probably principal of the house (Athenæ Cantab.) ; but he was at the same time practising his profession among the nobility, and from that time to his death he was constantly employed as physician at the court. The king, his queens, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, the Princess Mary, afterwards Queen Mary, the king's natural son, Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond, Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke of Norfolk, Sir Thomas Lovell, George Boleyn, and Lord Rochford, are all known to have been his patients. As physician to the king his salary was 100l. ”

“ Bede and Nennius agree in stating that when the news of their reception reached their original home very many others came to join them, until the whole of Kent was occupied. The story, as elaborated from Welsh sources in the ‘Historia Britonum,’ and by Geoffrey of Monmouth, represents that Hengist sent for his daughter and gave her to Vortigern in marriage in exchange for the whole of Kent, and that Hengist's son Aesc or Oisc, and Horsa's son Abisa, afterwards arrived with a fleet of forty galleys. ”

“ It consisted, as far as can be discovered from the records of the king's expenses, of painting flags for the Great Harry and other ships, surcoats and trappings for tournaments, banners and standards for the army sent into France under the Duke of Suffolk in 1523, escutcheons of arms, gilding the roofs and other decorations for a banqueting house at Greenwich, and for the castle at Guisnes in preparation for the Field of the Cloth of Gold. ”

“ He was born at Evesham, educated at both the English universities, and completed his studies in France and Italy. He applied himself especially to mathematics and medicine, and from his proficiency in the latter science acquired the name of 'Phœnix' Certain medical questions being under discussion at Rome about 1280, Evesham was invited to go to Rome and give his opinion by the then pope, either Nicholas III at the close of his pontificate, or Martin IV at the commencement of his. ”