BALE, JOHN bishop of Ossory, Eng11Sh author, was born at Cove, near Dunwich in Suffolk, on Nov. 21, 1495. At the age of 12 he entered the Carmelite monastery at Norwich, removing later to the house of "Holmes' probably the abbey of the Whitefriars at Hulne near Alnwick. Later he en tered Jesus college, Cambridge, graduating B.D. in 1529. At Cambridge he came under the influence of Cranmer and of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Baron Wentworth, and became an ardent partisan of the Reformers. He obtained the living of Thornden, Suffolk, in spite of being married. He enjoyed the powerful protection of Thomas Cromwell, whose notice he is said to have attracted by his miracle plays. He was an un scrupulous controversialist, and in these plays he allows no con siderations of decency to stand in the way of his denunciations of the monastic system and its supporters. The prayer of In fidelitas which opens the second act of his Thre Laws is an example of the lengths to which he went in profane parody. These violent productions were well calculated to impress popu lar feeling, and no doubt Cromwell found in him an invaluable instrument. But on his patron's fall in 1540 Bale fled with his wife and chijdren to Germany. He returned on the accession of Edward VI. He received the living of Bishopstoke, Hampshire, being promoted in 1552 to the Irish see of Ossory. He refused to be consecrated by the Roman rite which still obtained in the Irish Church, and won his point, though the dean of Dublin en tered a protest against the revised office during the ceremony (see his Vocacyon of John Bale to the Bishopperycke of Ossorie, Harl. Misc., vol. vi.). Bale pushed his Protestant propaganda in Ireland with no regard to expediency, and on the accession of Mary, it was with difficulty that he was got safely out of the coun try. He eventually made his way to Holland and thence to Frank furt and Basle. After his return, on the accession of Elizabeth, he received (1560) a prebendal stall at Canterbury. He died in Nov. 1563 and was buried in the cathedral. Of Bale's mysteries and miracle plays only five have been preserved. The Thre Laws of Nature, Moses and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharisses and Papystes most wicked (pr. 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, Covetous ness like a Pharisee or spiritual lawyer, False Doctrine like a popish doctor, and Hypocrisy like a gray friar." A Tragedye; or enterlude many f esting the chief promyses of God unto Man . . . printed in Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. i.), The Temptacyon of our Lorde (ed. A. B. Grosart in Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library, vol. i., 1870), and A brefe Comedy or Enter lude of Johan Baptystes preachynge in the Wyldernesse, etc. (Hari. Misc. vol. i.) were all written in His plays are doggerel, but his Kynge Johan (c. 1S48) has some historical im portance, since it marks the transition between the old morality play and the English historical dramas.
But Bale's most important work is Illustrium majoris Bri tanniae scriptorum, hoc est, Angliae, Cambriae, ac Scotiae, Sum marium . . . (Ipswich and Wesel, for John Overton, . This contained five centuries, but another edition, almost entirely rewritten and containing 14 centuries, was printed at Basle with the title Scriptorum illustrium majoris Britanniae . . . Catalogus (1557-59). The chronological catalogue of British authors and their works was partly founded on the Col lectanea and Commentarii of John Leland.
A list of Bale's works is to be found in Athenae Cantabrigienses (vol. i. pp. 227 seq.). Beside the reprints already mentioned, The Examinations of Lord Cobham, William Thorpe and Anne Askewe, etc. were edited by the Rev. H. Christmas for the Parker Society in 1849. Bale's autograph note-book is preserved in the Selden collection of the Bodleian library, Oxford. It contains the materials he collected for his two published catalogues arranged alphabetically, with no attempt at ornament of any kind, and without the personalities which deface his completed work. He also gives in most cases the sources from which his information was derived. This book was prepared for publication with notes by Dr. R. Lane Poole, with the help of Miss Mary Bateson, as Index Britanniae Scriptorum quos . . . collegit Ioannes Baleus forming part ix. of Anecdote Oxeniensia.