LONGLAND, JOHN

Bishop of Lincoln; b. Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, 1473; d. Woburn, May 7, 1547. Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he was ordained in April of 1500. He became principal of Magdalen Hall (1505), and in 1511 earned the doctorate of divinity. His first major ecclesiastical appointment came in 1514 when he was appointed dean of Salisbury and confessor to henry viii. In 1521 Henry appointed Longland Lord Almoner, and in May of the same year he was elevated to the bishopric of Lincoln. As bishop he continued to exercise severe repressive measures against the lollards and other heretical groups in his diocese. Cardinal Thomas wolsey, however, prevailed upon him to support Henry VIII's divorce proceedings. In 1533 Bishop Longland sat as an assistant judge in the divorce hearings at Dunstable Priory, with Thomas Cranmer, whom less than two months previously he had consecrated archbishop of Canterbury. Longland's stand on the divorce question and his support of the royal supremacy made him one of the principal targets, after Cranmer himself, of the rebellions that arose shortly, and that had their center in his diocese (see aske, robert; pilgrimage of grace). Later in life he repented ever having taken part in the king's divorce question.

His sermons, though marked with "rhetorical repetitions" and "prolixity" were powerful and justly famed. erasmus dedicated several treatises to Longland; Thomas more referred to him as a "second Colet." A Benedictional was written for his use and printed in London in 1528 by Richard Pynson; extant copies are at Lambeth and the British Museum. It is edited by R. M. Wooley, The Benedictional of John Longlande, Bishop of Lincoln (London 1927). Longland's published works include Tres conciones; Quinque sermones ; printed by Pynson (London c. 1527); Expositiones concionales, on the Penitential Psalms; and a Good Friday Sermon, spoken before Henry VIII at Greenwich and printed by Thomas Petyt (London c. 1536).

Bibliography: a. h. thompson, ed., Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1517–1531, 3 v. (Lincoln Record Society Publications 33, 35, 37; Hereford 1940–47) v. 2–3. p. hughes, The Reformation in England, 3 v. in 1 (5th rev. ed. New York 1963). j. h. lupton, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, 63 v. (London 1885–1900) 12:120–121.

[j. g. dwyer]