CHEKE, SIR JOHN English classical scholar, was one of the founders of Greek learning at Oxford. At St. John's college, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1529, he adopted the principles of the Reformation. In 154o, on Henry VIII.'s foundation of the regius professorships, he was elected to the chair of Greek. In a letter on the state of Greek learning at Cambridge to a fellow of St. John's college, Oxford, in 1542, his pupil, Roger Ascham, describes how Demosthenes had be come as familiar as Cicero, and that Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon were more conned than Livy was in his student days. With Sir Thomas Smith, who shares with him the major part of the credit for the establishment of Greek studies at Cam bridge, he introduced the "Erasmian" pronunciation of Greek in his lectures, rejecting the Italian and modern Greek method of giving various vowels and diphthongs the same sound, which the first western students had learned from Greek and Italian humanists. It was strenuously opposed in the university, where the "Reuchlinian" method favoured by Melancthon prevailed, and Bishop Gardiner, as chancellor, issued a decree against it (June 1542) ; but Cheke ultimately triumphed. On July 1o, he was chosen tutor to Prince Edward, who retained him in that capacity after his accession to the throne. Cheke sat, as member for Bletchingly, for the parliaments in 1547 and 1552-1553; he was made provost of King's college, Cambridge (April I, 1548), was one of the commissioners for visiting that university as well as Oxford and Eton, and was appointed with seven divines to draw up a body of laws for the governance of the church. On Oct. I 1, 1551, he was knighted; in 1553 he was made one of the secretaries of State, and sworn of the privy council. He filled the office of secretary of State for Lady Jane Grey during her nine days' reign. In consequence Mary threw him into the Tower (July 27, and confiscated his wealth. He was released on Sept. 13, and granted permission to travel abroad. He went first to Basle, then visited Italy, giving lectures in Greek at Padua, and finally settled at Strasbourg, teaching Greek for his living. In the spring of 1556 he visited Brussels to see his wife; on his way back, between Brussels and Antwerp, he and Sir Peter Carew were treacherously seized (May 15) by order of Philip of Spain, hurried over to England, and imprisoned in the Tower. Cheke was terrified by a threat of the stake, and giving way, was received into the Church of Rome by Car dinal Pole, being cruelly forced to make two public recantations. He died in London on Sept. 13, Thomas Wilson, in the epistle prefixed to his translation of the Olynthiacs of Demosthenes (1 S 7o),, has a long and most interesting eulogy of Cheke; and Thomas Nash, in To the Gentlemen Students, prefixed to Robert Greene's Menaphon (1589), calls him "the Ex chequer of eloquence, Sir Ihon Cheke, a man of men, supernaturally traded in all tongues." Many of Cheke's works are still in ms., some have been lost altogether. One of the most interesting from an histori cal point of view is the Hurt of Sedition how greueous it is to a Com munewelth (1549), written on the occasion of Ket's rebellion, repub lished in 1569, 1576 and 1641, on the last occasion with a life of the author by Gerard Langbaine. Others are D. Joannis Chrysostomi homiliae duae (1543) , D. Joannis Chrysostomi de providentia Dei The Gospel according to St. Matthew . . . translated (c. 155o; ed. James Goodwin, 1843) , De obitu Martini Buceri 0551), (Leo VI.'s) de Apparatu bellico (Basel, 1554; but dedicated to Henry VIII., 1544), Carmen Heroicum, aut epitaphium in Antonium Dencium 0550, De pronuntiatione Graecae ... linguae (Basel, 1555) . He also translated several Greek works, and lectured admirably upon Demosthenes.
His Life was written by John Strype (London 1705, Oxford 1821) ; additions by J. Gough Nichols in Archaeologia (186o) , xxxviii. 98, 127.