Robert Wakefield (ca. 1493/5-1537) [1] was an English linguist and scholar.
He studied at the University of Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1513-1514. [2] He was awarded an M.A. at the University of Leuven in 1519; while in the Low Countries he taught Hebrew at Jeroen van Busleyden's Collegium Trilingue in Leuven. John Fisher was his patron, and in 1519 he also became Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He was at the University of Tübingen in 1522, teaching as the successor of Johannes Reuchlin. [3]
He taught Hebrew at Cambridge from 1524 and received the B.D. there the following year. Richard Pace recommended the subject to the king and he was appointed a royal chaplain. [4] His Oratio de utilitate trium linguarum (1524), the printed version by Wynkyn de Worde of his inaugural lecture, contained the first examples of Hebrew text, and Arabic, published in England. [5] From 1530 he taught in Oxford and is rumored to have stolen the ancient Hebrew lexicon from the abbey library at Ramsey. [6]
He wrote in favour of Henry VIII's divorce, after being persuaded by Richard Pace to drop his support for Catherine of Aragon; in 1528 he issued a work putting the king’s case, and showing by its dedication that he now had Thomas Boleyn as patron. [7] [8] He became a canon of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1532.
Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and execution, by beheading for treason, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation.
Sir Thomas Wyatt was a 16th-century English politician, ambassador, and lyric poet credited with introducing the sonnet to English literature. He was born at Allington Castle near Maidstone in Kent, though the family was originally from Yorkshire. His family adopted the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses. His mother was Anne Skinner, and his father Henry, who had earlier been imprisoned and tortured by Richard III, had been a Privy Councillor of Henry VII and remained a trusted adviser when Henry VIII ascended the throne in 1509.
Reginald Pole was an English cardinal and the last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury, holding the office from 1556 to 1558, during the Counter-Reformation.
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was a prominent English politician and nobleman of the Tudor era. He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting these royal marriages. After falling from favour in 1546, he was stripped of his dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London, avoiding execution when Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.
George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford was an English courtier and nobleman who played a prominent role in the politics of the early 1530s as the brother of Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII. George was the maternal uncle of Queen Elizabeth I, although he died long before his niece ascended the throne. Following his father's promotion in the peerage in 1529 to Earl of Wiltshire and Earl of Ormond, he adopted his father's junior title Viscount Rochford as a courtesy title. He was accused of incest with his sister Anne during the period of her trial for high treason, as a result of which both were executed.
Alexander Ales or Alexander Alesius was a Scottish theologian who emigrated to Germany and became a Lutheran supporter of the Augsburg Confession.
Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland, KG was an English nobleman, active as a military officer in the north. He is now primarily remembered as the betrothed of Anne Boleyn, whom he was forced to give up before she became involved with and later married King Henry VIII.
Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire was an English noblewoman, noted for being the mother of Anne Boleyn and as such the maternal grandmother of Elizabeth I of England. The eldest daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk and his first wife Elizabeth Tilney, she married Thomas Boleyn sometime in the later 15th century. Elizabeth became Viscountess Rochford in 1525 when her husband was elevated to the peerage, subsequently becoming Countess of Ormond in 1527 and Countess of Wiltshire in 1529.
The Collegium Trilingue, often also called Collegium trium linguarum, or, after its creator Collegium Buslidianum, is a university that was founded in 1517 under the patronage of the humanist, Hieronymus van Busleyden. The three languages taught were Latin, Greek and Hebrew. It was the model for the Collège de France founded in 1530. It is located in Leuven, Belgium.
Eustace Chapuys, the son of Louis Chapuys and Guigonne Dupuys, was a Savoyard diplomat who served Charles V as Imperial ambassador to England from 1529 until 1545 and is best known for his extensive and detailed correspondence.
William Carey was a courtier and favourite of King Henry VIII of England. He served the king as a Gentleman of the Privy chamber, and Esquire of the Body to the King. His wife, Mary Boleyn, is known to history as a mistress of King Henry VIII and the sister of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn.
Richard Croke was an English classical scholar and a royal tutor and agent.
Events from the 1530s in England.
John Sackville MP was a member of parliament for East Grinstead, and a local administrator in Essex, Sussex and Surrey. His first wife was Margaret Boleyn, an aunt of Henry VIII's second Queen, Anne Boleyn, and a great-aunt of Queen Elizabeth I.
John Skypp was the Bishop of Hereford from 1539 until 1552, and the almoner of Queen Anne Boleyn.
Mary Boleyn, also known as Lady Mary, was the sister of English queen consort Anne Boleyn, whose family enjoyed considerable influence during the reign of King Henry VIII.
Nicholas Metcalfe was an English churchman and college head.
Leonard Cox was an English humanist, author of the first book in English on rhetoric. He was a scholar of international reputation who found patronage in Poland, and was friend of Erasmus and Melanchthon. He was known to contemporaries as a grammarian, rhetorician, poet, and preacher, and was skilled in the modern as well as the classical languages.
William Latymer or Latimer (1499–1583) was an English evangelical clergyman, Dean of Peterborough from 1560. He was chaplain to Anne Boleyn, and is best known for his biography of her, the Chronickille of Anne Bulleyne.
Thomas Forman, was an early English reformer who served as the rector of All Hallows, Honey Lane and also as President of Queens' College, Cambridge. He is chiefly remembered for distributing heretical books before the English Reformation with his curate Thomas Gerrard.