It was long a commonplace of Reformation history that John Bale,
the
Catholic friar turned Protestant firebrand, was during his time at
Cambridge University a member of Jesus College. This received
wisdom was enshrined in the pages of such standard reference works as
Cooper and Venn, and was regularly repeated, where appropriate, in
histories of the university and of the English Reformation. This was not
questioned until J. Crompton observed over thirty years ago that there
was no foundation for this tradition. Crompton's lead was followed
some
years later by L. P. Fairfield, who reiterated in his study of Bale that
there
was ‘no evidence whatever that Bale ever became a member of Jesus
College’. However, despite these categorical conclusions, the editor
of
Bale's surviving plays, Peter Happé, now the leading authority
on Bale's
life and works, has recently maintained that after all he ‘probably
entered
Jesus College’. In making this claim, Happé argues partly
from a passage
in Bale's own writings relating to his connection with two early Fellows
of
Jesus College, Geoffrey Downes and Thomas Cranmer, and partly from
a later tradition of Bale's membership attested in a seventeenth-century
manuscript history of the college. A close analysis of the evidence,
however, corroborates the contention of Crompton and Fairfield, and
indicates that the later tradition arose from a misinterpretation by the
Stuart antiquary Thomas Fuller of Bale's own recollections.
