part i
. (Homburg v. d. Höhe, 1905).
(J. B. B.)
BALDWIN II. (1217-1273), emperor of Romania, was a younger son of Yolande, sister of Baldwin I. Her husband, Peter of Courtenay, was third emperor of Romania, and had been followed by his son Robert, on whose death in 1228 the succession passed to Baldwin, a boy of eleven years old. The barons chose John of Brienne (titular king of Jerusalem) as emperor-regent for life; Baldwin was to rule the Asiatic possessions of the empire when he reached the age of twenty, was to marry John's daughter Mary, and on John's death to enjoy the full imperial sovereignty. The marriage contract was carried out in 1234. Since the death of the emperor Henry in 1216, the Latin empire had declined and the Greek power advanced; and the hopes that John of Brienne might restore it were disappointed. He died in 1237. The realm which Baldwin governed was little more than Constantinople. His financial situation was desperate, and his life was chiefly occupied in begging at European courts. He went to the West in 1236, visited Rome, France and Flanders, trying to raise money and men to recover the lost territory of his realm. His efforts met with success, and in 1240 he returned to Constantinople (through Germany and Hungary) at the head of a considerable army. Circumstances hindered him from accomplishing anything with this help, and in 1245 he travelled again to the West, first to Italy and then to France, where he spent two years. The empress Maria and Philip of Toucy governed during his absence. He was happy to be able to get money from King Louis IX. in exchange for relics. In 1249 he was with King Louis at Damietta. The extremity of his financial straits reduced him soon afterwards to handing over his only son Philip to merchants as a pledge for loans of money. Louis IX. redeemed the hostage. The rest of his inglorious reign was spent by Baldwin in mendicant tours in western Europe. In 1261 Constantinople was captured by Michael Palaeologus, and Baldwin's rule came to an end. He escaped in a Venetian galley to Negropont, and then proceeded to Athens, thence to Apulia, finally to France. As titular emperor, his rôle was still the same, to beg help from the western powers. In 1267 he went to Italy; his hopes were centred in Charles of Anjou. Charles seriously entertained the idea of conquering Constantinople, though various complications hindered him from realizing it. He made a definite treaty with Baldwin to this intent (May 1267). During the next year Baldwin and his son Philip lived on pensions from Charles. In October 1273 Philip married Beatrice, daughter of Charles, at Foggia. A few days later Baldwin died.
See authorities for BALDWIN I. above; also Norden, _Das Papsttum und Byzanz_ (Berlin 1903).
(J. B. B.)
BALDWIN I., prince of Edessa (1098-1100), and first king of Jerusalem (1100-1118), was the brother of Godfrey of Bouillon (_q.v._). He was originally a clerk in orders, and held several prebends; but in 1096 he joined the first crusade, and accompanied his brother Godfrey as far as Heraclea in Asia Minor. When Tancred left the main body of the crusaders at Heraclea, and marched into Cilicia, Baldwin followed, partly in jealousy,
## partly from the same political motives which animated Tancred. He wrested
Tarsus from Tancred's grip (September 1097), and left there a garrison of his own. After rejoining the main army at Marash, he received an invitation from an Armenian named Pakrad, and moved eastwards towards the Euphrates, where he occupied Tell-bashir. Another invitation followed from Thoros of Edessa; and to Edessa Baldwin came, first as protector, and then, when Thoros was assassinated, as his successor (March 1098). For two years he ruled in Edessa (1098-1100), marrying an Armenian wife, and acting generally as the intermediary between the crusaders and the Armenians. During these two years he was successful in maintaining his ground, both against the Mahommedan powers by which he was surrounded, and from which he won Samosata and Seruj (Sarorgia), and against a conspiracy of his own subjects in 1098. At the end of 1099 he visited Jerusalem along with Bohemund I.; but he returned to Edessa in January 1100. On the death of Godfrey he was summoned by a party in Jerusalem to succeed to his brother. A lay reaction against the theocratic pretensions of Dagobert, who was counting on Norman support, was responsible for the summons; and in the strength of that reaction Baldwin was able to become the first king of Jerusalem. He was crowned on Christmas Day, 1100, by the patriarch himself; but the struggle of church and state was not yet over, and in the spring of 1101 Baldwin had Dagobert suspended by a papal legate, while later in the year the two disagreed on the question of the contribution to be made by the patriarch towards the defence of the Holy Land. The struggle ended in the deposition of Dagobert and the triumph of Baldwin (1102).
As Baldwin had secured the supremacy of the lay power in Jerusalem, so he extended into a compact kingdom the poor and straggling territories to which he had succeeded. This he did by an alliance with the Italian trading towns, especially Genoa, which supplied in return for the concession of a quarter in the conquered towns, the instruments and the skill for a war of sieges, in which the coast towns of Palestine were successively reduced. Arsuf and Caesarea were captured in 1101; Acre in 1104; Beirut and Sidon in 1110 (the latter with the aid of the Venetians and Norwegians). Meanwhile Baldwin repelled in successive years the attacks of the Egyptians (1102, 1103, 1105), and in the latter years of his reign (1115-1118) he even pushed southward at the expense of Egypt, penetrating as far as the Red Sea, and planting an outpost at Monreal. In the north he had to compose the dissensions of the Christian princes in Tripoli, Antioch and Edessa (1109-1110), and to help them to maintain their ground against the Mahommedan princes of N.E. Syria, especially Maudud and Aksunk-ur, amirs of Mosul. In this way Baldwin was able to make himself into practical suzerain of the three Christian principalities of the north, though the suzerainty was, and always continued to be, somewhat nominal. In 1118 he died, after an expedition to Egypt, during which he captured Farama, and, as old Fuller says, "caught many fish, and his death in eating them."
Baldwin was one of the "adventurer princes" of the first crusade, and as such he stands alongside of Bohemund, Tancred and Raymund. On the whole he was the most successful of his class. By his defence of the lay power against a nascent theocracy, and by his alliance with the Italian towns, he was the real founder of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Events worked for him: he might never have come to the throne, unless Bohemund had fallen into the hands of Danishmend; and the dissensions among the Mahommedans alone made possible the subsequent consolidation of his kingdom. But he had _virtù_ as well as _fortuna_; and on his tombstone it was written that he was "a second Judas Maccabaeus, whom Kedar and Egypt, Dan and Damascus dreaded." As king, he still retained something of the clerk in the habit of his dress; but he was at the same time a warrior so impetuous, as to be sometimes foolhardy, and his policy was on the whole anti-clerical. He may be accused of greed: his life was not chaste; and the two defects met in his rejection of his Armenian wife and his marriage to the rich Sicilian widow Adelaide (1113). But "on the holiest soil of history, he gave his people a fatherland"; and Fulcher of Chartres, his chaplain, who paints at the beginning of Baldwin's reign the terrors of the lonely band of Christians in the midst of their foes, can celebrate at the end the formation of a new nation in the East (_qui fuimus occidentales, nunc facti sumus orientales_)--an achievement which, so far as it was the work of any one man, was the work of Baldwin I.
LITERATURE.--The _Historia Hierosolymitana_ of Fulcher, who had accompanied Baldwin as chaplain to Edessa, and had lived in [v.03 p.0246] Jerusalem during his reign, is the primary authority for Baldwin's career. There is a monograph on Baldwin by Wolff (_König Baldwin I. von Jerusalem_), and his reign is sketched in R. Röhricht's _Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem_ (Innsbruck, 1898) C. i.-iv.
(E. BR.)
BALDWIN II., count of Edessa (1100-1118), king of Jerusalem (1118-1131), originally known as Baldwin de Burg, was a son of Count Hugh of Rethel, and a nephew of Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin I. He appears on the first crusade at Constantinople as one of Godfrey's men; and he helped Tancred to occupy Bethlehem in June 1099. After the capture of Jerusalem he served for a time with Bohemund at Antioch; but when Baldwin of Edessa became king of Jerusalem, he summoned Baldwin de Burg, and left him as count in Edessa. From Edessa Baldwin conducted continual forays against the Mahommedan princes; and in the great foray of 1104, in which he was joined by Bohemund, he was defeated and captured at Balich. Tancred became guardian of Edessa during Baldwin's captivity, and did not trouble himself greatly to procure his release. Baldwin, however, recovered his liberty at the beginning of 1108, and at once entered upon a struggle with Tancred for the recovery of Edessa. In September 1108 he regained his principality; but the struggle with Tancred continued, until it was composed by Baldwin in 1109. For the next ten years Baldwin ruled his principality with success, if not without severity. Planted in the farthest Christian outpost in northern Syria, he had to meet many attacks, especially from Mardin and Mosul, in revenge for the provocation offered by his own forays and those of the restless Tancred. In 1110 he was besieged in Edessa, and relieved by Baldwin I.; in 1114 he repelled an attack by Aksunkur of Mosul; in 1115 he helped to defeat Aksunkur at Danith. At the same time, if Matthew of Edessa may be trusted, he also carried his arms against the Armenians, and plundered in his avarice every Armenian of wealth and position. In 1118 he was on his way to spend Easter at Jerusalem, when he received the news of the death of Baldwin I.; and when he arrived at Jerusalem, he was made king, chiefly by the influence of the patriarch Arnulf. In a reign of thirteen years, Baldwin II. extended the kingdom of Jerusalem to its widest limits. His reign is marked by almost incessant fighting in northern Syria. In 1119, after the defeat and death of Roger of Antioch, he defeated the amirs of Mardin and Damascus at Danith; in subsequent years he extended his sway to the very gates of Aleppo. In 1123 he was captured by Balak of Mardin, and confined in Kharput with Joscelin, his successor in the county of Edessa, who had been captured in the previous year. During his captivity Eustace Graverius became regent of Jerusalem, and succeeded, with the aid of the Venetians, in repelling an Egyptian attack, and even in capturing Tyre, 1124. In 1124 Baldwin II. succeeded in securing his liberty, under conditions which he instantly broke; and he at once embarked on strenuous and not unsuccessful hostilities against Aleppo and Damascus (1124-1127), exacting tribute from both. During his reign he twice acted as regent in Antioch (1119, 1130), and in 1126 he married his daughter Alice to Bohemund II. In 1128 he offered the hand of his eldest daughter, Melisinda, to Fulk of Anjou, who had been recommended to him by Honorius II. In 1129 Fulk came and married Melisinda, and in 1131, on the death of Baldwin, he succeeded to the crown.
Baldwin II. had much of the churchmanship of Godfrey and Baldwin I.; but he appears most decidedly as an incessant warrior, under whom the Latin domination in the East stretched, as Ibn al-Athir writes, in a long line from Mardin in the North to el-Arish on the Red Sea--a line only broken by the Mahommedan powers of Aleppo, Hamah, Homs and Damascus. The Franks controlled the great routes of trade, and took tolls of the traders; and in 1130 their power may be regarded as having reached its height.
LITERATURE.--Fulcher of Chartres narrates the reign of Baldwin II. down to 1127; for the rest of the reign the authority is William of Tyre. R. Röhricht, _Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem_ (Innsbruck, 1898), C. vii.-x., is the chief modern authority.
(E. BR.)
BALDWIN III., king of Jerusalem (1143-1162), was the eldest son of Fulk of Jerusalem by his wife Melisinda. He was born in 1130, and became king in 1143, under the regency of his mother, which lasted till 1152. He came to the throne at a time when the attacks of the Greeks in Cilicia, and of Zengi on Edessa, were fatally weakening the position of the Franks in northern Syria; and from the beginning of his reign the power of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem may be said to be slowly declining, though as yet there is little outward trace of its decay to be seen. Edessa was lost, however, in the year after Baldwin's accession, and the conquest by Zengi of this farthest and most important outpost in northern Syria was already a serious blow to the kingdom. Upon it in 1147 there followed the second crusade; and in that crusade Baldwin III., now some eighteen years of age, played his part by the side of Conrad III. and Louis VII. He received them in Jerusalem in 1148; with them he planned the attack on Damascus and with them he signally failed in the attack. In 1149, after the failure of the crusade, Baldwin III. appeared in Antioch, where the fall of Raymund, the husband of the princess Constance, made his presence necessary. He regulated affairs in Antioch, and tried to strengthen the north of Palestine generally against the arm of Zengi's successor, Nureddin, by renewing the old and politic alliance with Damascus interrupted since 1147, and by ceding Tellbashir, the one remnant of the county of Edessa, to Manuel of Constantinople. In 1152 came the inevitable struggle between the young king and his mother, who had ruled with wisdom and vigour during the regency and was unwilling to lay down the reins of power. Baldwin originally planned a solemn coronation, as the signal of his emancipation. Dissuaded from that course, he nevertheless wore his crown publicly in the church of the Sepulchre. A struggle followed: in the issue, Baldwin agreed to leave his mother in possession of Jerusalem and Nablus, while he retained Acre and Tyre for himself. But he repented of the bargain; and a new struggle began, in which Baldwin recovered, after some fighting, the possession of his capital. From these internal dissensions Baldwin was now summoned to the north, to regulate anew the affairs of Antioch and also those of Tripoli, where the death of Count Raymund had thrown on his shoulders the cares of a second regency. On his return to Jerusalem he was successful in repelling an attack by an army of Turcomans; and his success encouraged him to attempt the siege of Ascalon in the spring of 1153. He was successful: the "bride of Syria," which had all but become the property of the crusaders in 1099, but had since defied the arms of the Franks for half a century, became part of the kingdom of Jerusalem. From 1156 to 1158 Baldwin was occupied in hostilities with Nureddin. In 1156 he had to submit to a treaty which cut short his territories; in the winter of 1157-1158 he besieged and captured Harim, in the territory once belonging to Antioch: in 1158 he defeated Nureddin himself. In the same year Baldwin married Theodora, a near relative of the East Roman emperor Manuel; while in 1159 he received a visit from Manuel himself at Antioch. The Latin king rode behind the Greek emperor, without any of the insignia of his dignity, at the entry into Antioch; but their relations were of the friendliest, and Manuel--as great a physician as he was a hunter--personally attended to Baldwin when the king was thrown from his horse in attempting to equal the emperor's feats of horsemanship. In the same year Baldwin had to undertake the regency in Antioch once more, Raynald of Chatillon, the second husband of Constance, being captured in battle. Three years later he died (1162), without male issue, and was succeeded by his brother Amalric I.
Baldwin III. was the first of the kings of Jerusalem who was a native of the soil of Palestine. His three predecessors had all been emigrants from the West. His reign also marks a new departure from another point of view. His predecessors had been men of a type half military, half clerical--at once hard fighters and sound churchmen. Baldwin was a man of a subtler type--a man capable of dealing with the intrigues of a court and with problems of law, and, as such, suited for guiding the middle age of the kingdom, which the different qualities of his predecessors had been equally suited to found. Like his brother, Amalric I., he was a clerkly and studious king versed [v.03 p.0247] in law, and ready to discuss points of dogma. In an excellent sketch of Baldwin's character (xvi. cii.), William of Tyre tells us that he spent his spare time in reading and had a
## particular affection for history; that he was well skilled in the _jus
consuetudinarium_ of the kingdom (afterwards recorded by lawyers like John of Ibelin and Philip of Novara as "the assizes of Jerusalem"); and that he had the royal faculty for remembering faces, and could generally be trusted to address by name anybody whom he had once met, so that he was more popular with high and low than any of his predecessors. He had, William also reports, a gift of impromptu eloquence, and a faculty both for saying witty things pleasantly at other people's expense and for listening placidly to witticisms directed against himself; while he was generous to excess without needing to make exactions in order to support his generosity, and always respected the Church. If in his youth he had been prone to gambling, and before his marriage with Theodora had been somewhat lax in his morals, when he became a man he put away childish things; his married life was a shining example to his people and he was abstemious both in food and drink, holding that "excess in either was an incentive to the worst of crimes." Even his enemy, Nureddin, said of him, when he died--"the Franks have lost such a prince that the world has not now his like."
LITERATURE.--William of Tyre is the great primary authority for his reign; Cinnamus and Ibn-al-athir (see _Bibliography_ to the article CRUSADES) give the Byzantine and Mahommedan point of view. His reign is described by R. Röhricht, _Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem_ (Innsbruck, 1898), C. xiii.-xvi.
(E. BR.)
BALDWIN IV., the son of Amalric I. by his first wife Agnes, ruled in Jerusalem from 1174 to 1183, when he had his nephew Baldwin crowned in his stead. Educated by William of Tyre, Baldwin IV. came to the throne at the early age of thirteen; and thus the kingdom came under the regency of Raymund II. of Tripoli. Happily for the kingdom whose king was a child and a leper, the attention of Saladin was distracted for several years by an attempt to wrest from the sons of Nureddin the inheritance of their father--an attempt partially successful in 1174, but only finally realized in 1183. The problems of the reign of Baldwin IV. may be said to have been two--his sister Sibylla and the fiery Raynald of Chatillon, once prince of Antioch through marriage to Constance (1153-1159), then a captive for many years in the hand of the Mahommedans, and since 1176 lord of Krak (Kerak), to the east of the Dead Sea. Sibylla was the heiress of the kingdom; the problem of her marriage was important. Married first to William of Montferrat, to whom she bore a son, Baldwin, she was again married in 1180 to Guy of Lusignan; and dissensions between Sibylla and her husband on the one side, and Baldwin IV. on the other, troubled the latter years of his reign. Meanwhile Raynald of Krak took advantage of the position of his fortress, which lay on the great route of trade from Damascus and Egypt, to plunder the caravans (1182), and thus helped to precipitate the inevitable attack by Saladin. When the attack came, Guy of Lusignan was made regent by Baldwin IV., but he declined battle and he was consequently deposed both from his regency and from his right of succession, while Sibylla's son by her first husband was crowned king as Baldwin V. in 1183. For a time Baldwin IV. still continued to be active; but in 1184 he handed over the regency to Raymund of Tripoli, and in 1185 he died.
LITERATURE.--The narrative of William of Tyre concludes with Baldwin IV.'s transfer of the regency to Raymund of Tripoli. R. Röhricht describes the reign of Baldwin IV., _Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem_ (Innsbruck, 1898), C. xix.-xxi.
(E. BR.)
BALDWIN V., the son of Sibylla (daughter of Amalric I.) by her first husband, William of Montferrat, was the nominal king of Jerusalem from 1183 to 1186, under the regency of Raymund of Tripoli. His reign is marked by the advance of Saladin and by dissensions between the government and Guy of Lusignan.
BALDWIN, JAMES MARK (1861- ), American philosopher, was born at Columbia, S.C., and educated at Princeton and several German universities. He was professor of philosophy in the university of Toronto (1889), of psychology at Princeton (1893), and subsequently (1903) of philosophy and psychology in Johns Hopkins University. Prominent among experimental psychologists, he was one of the founders of the _Psychological Review_. In 1892 he was vice-president of the International Congress of Psychology held in London, and in 1897-1898 president of the American Psychological Association; he received a gold medal from the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Denmark (1897), was honorary president of the International Congress of Criminal Anthropology held in Geneva in 1896, and was made an honorary D.Sc. of Oxford University. Apart from articles in the _Psychological Review_, he has written:--_Handbook of Psychology_ (1890); translation of Ribot's _German Psychology of To-day_ (1886); _Elements of Psychology_ (1893); _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development_ (1898); _Story of the Mind_ (1898); _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_ (1896); _Thought and Things_ (London and New York, vol. i., 1906). He also contributed largely to the _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_ (1901-1905), of which he was editor-in-chief.
BALDWIN, ROBERT (1804-1858), Canadian statesman, was born at York (now Toronto) on the 12th of May 1804. His father, William Warren Baldwin (d. 1844), went to Canada from Ireland in 1798; though a man of wealth and good family and a devoted member of the Church of England, he opposed the religious and political oligarchy which was then at the head of Canadian affairs, and brought up his son in the same principles. Robert Baldwin was called to the Bar in 1825, and entered into partnership with his father. In 1829 he was elected a member of the parliament of Upper Canada for the town of York, but was defeated in the following year and retired for a time into private life. During the next six years, he so constantly advocated a responsible executive as the one cure for the political and economic evils of the time that he was known as "the man of one idea." In 1836 he was called by Sir Francis Bond Head (1793-1875), the lieutenant-governor, to the executive council, but finding himself without influence, and compelled to countenance measures to which he was opposed, he resigned within a month. Though a reformer, he strongly disapproved of the rebellion of 1837-1838. On the union of the two Canadas he became (1841) a member of the executive council under Lord Sydenham, but soon resigned on the question of responsible government. In 1842 he formed the first Liberal administration, in connexion with Mr (afterwards Sir) L. H. Lafontaine, but resigned the next year, after a quarrel with the governor-general, Sir Charles Metcalfe, on a question of patronage, in which he felt that of responsible government to be involved. At the general election which followed, the governor-general was sustained by a narrow majority, but in 1848 the Liberals were again returned to power, and he and Mr Lafontaine formed their second administration under Lord Elgin and carried numerous important reforms, including the freeing from sectarian control of the Provincial University and the introduction into Upper Canada of an important municipal system.
Internal dissensions soon began to appear in the Liberal party, and in 1851 Mr Baldwin resigned. The special struggle leading to his resignation was an attempt to abolish the court of chancery of Upper Canada, whose constitution was due to a measure introduced by Baldwin in 1849. The attempt, though defeated, had been supported by a majority of the representatives from Upper Canada, and Baldwin's fastidious conscience took it as a vote of want of confidence. A deeper reason was his inability to approve of the advanced views of the Radicals, or "Clear Grits," as they came to be called. On seeking re-election in York, he declined to give any pledge on the burning question of the Clergy Reserves and was defeated. In 1858 the Liberal-Conservative party, formed in 1854 by a coalition, attempted to bring him out as a candidate for the upper house, which was at this date elective, but though he had broken with the advanced reformers, he could not approve of the tactics of their opponents, and refused to stand. He died on the 9th of December 1858. Even those who most bitterly attacked his measures admitted the purity and unselfishness of his motives. After the concession of responsible government, he devoted himself to bringing about [v.03 p.0248] a good understanding between the English and French-speaking inhabitants of Canada, and his memory is held as dear among the French Canadians as in his native province of Ontario.
See J. C. Dent, _Canadian Portrait Gallery_ (1880). His life, by the Hon. Geo. W. Ross, is included in _The Makers of Canada_ series (Toronto).
BALE, JOHN (1495-1563), bishop of Ossory, English author, was born at Cove, near Dunwich in Suffolk, on the 21st of November 1495. At the age of twelve he entered the Carmelite monastery at Norwich, removing later to the house of "Holme," probably the abbey of the Whitefriars at Hulne near Alnwick. Later he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, and took his degree of 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 laid aside his monastic habit, and, as he himself puts it with characteristically brutal violence, "that I might never more serve so execrable a beast, I took to wife the faithful Dorothy." He obtained the living of Thornden, Suffolk, but in 1534 was summoned before the archbishop of York for a sermon against the invocation of saints preached at Doncaster, and afterwards before Stokesley, bishop of London, but he escaped through the powerful protection of Thomas Cromwell, whose notice he is said to have attracted by his miracle plays. He was an unscrupulous controversialist, and in these plays he allows no considerations of decency to stand in the way of his denunciations of the monastic system and its supporters. The prayer of Infidelitas which opens the second act of his _Thre Laws_ (quoted by T. Warton, _Hist. Eng. Poetry_, sect. 41) is an example of the lengths to which he went in profane parody. These coarse and violent productions were well calculated to impress popular 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 children 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 entered a protest against the revised office during the ceremony (see his _Vocacyon of John Bale to the Bishopperycke of Ossorie, Harl. Misc._ vol. vi.). He pushed his Protestant propaganda in Ireland with no regard to expediency, and when the accession of Mary inaugurated a reaction in matters of religion, it was with difficulty that he was got safely out of the country. He tried to escape to Scotland, but on the voyage was captured by a Dutch man-of-war, which was driven by stress of weather to St. Ives in Cornwall. Bale was arrested on suspicion of treason, but soon released. At Dover he had another narrow escape, but he eventually made his way to Holland and thence to Frankfort and Basel. During his exile he devoted himself to writing. After his return, on the accession of Elizabeth, he received (1560) a prebendal stall at Canterbury. He died in November 1563 and was buried in the cathedral.
The scurrility and vehemence with which "foul-mouthed Bale," as Wood calls him, attacked his enemies does not destroy the value of his contributions to literature, though his strong bias against Roman Catholic writers does detract from the critical value of his works. Of his mysteries and miracle plays only five have been preserved, but the titles of the others, quoted by himself in his _Catalogus_, show that they were animated by the same political and religious aims. The _Thre Laws of Nature, Moses and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharisees 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, Covetousness like a Pharisee or spiritual lawyer, False Doctrine like a popish doctor, and Hypocrisy like a gray friar." _A Tragedye; or enterlude manyfesting the chief promyses of God unto Man ..._ (1538, printed in Dodsley's _Old Plays_, vol. 1), _The Temptacyon of our Lorde_ (ed. A. B. Grosart in _Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library_, vol. i., 1870), and _A brefe Comedy or Enterlude of Johan Baptystes preachynge in the Wyldernesse, &c._ (_Harl. Misc._ vol. i.) were all written in 1538. His plays are doggerel, but he is a figure of some dramatic importance as the author of _Kynge Johan_ (_c._ 1548), which marks the transition between the old morality play and the English historical drama. It does not appear to have directly influenced the creators of the chronicle histories. To the authors of the _Troublesome Raigne of King John_ (1591) it was apparently unknown, but it is noteworthy that an attempt, however feeble, at historical drama was made fourteen years before the production of _Gorboduc_. _Kynge Johan_ (ed. J. P. Collier, Camden Soc. 1838) is itself a polemic against the Roman Catholic Church. King John is represented as the champion of English rites against the Roman see:--
"This noble Kynge Johan, as a faythfull Moses Withstode proude Pharao for his poore Israel."
But the English people remained in the bondage of Rome,--
"Tyll that duke Josue, whych was our late Kynge Henrye, Clerely brought us out in to the lande of mylke and honye."
Elsewhere John is called a Lollard and accused of "heretycall langage," and he is finally poisoned by a monk of Swinestead. Allegorical characters are mixed with the real persons. Ynglonde _vidua_, represents the nation, and the jocular element is provided by Sedwyson (sedition), who would have been the Vice in a pure morality play. One actor was obviously intended to play many parts, for stage directions such as "Go out Ynglond, and dress for Clargy" are by no means uncommon. The MS. of _Kynge Johan_ was discovered between 1831 and 1838 among the corporation papers at Ipswich, where it was probably performed, for there are references to charitable foundations by King John in the town and neighbourhood. It is described at the end of the MS. as two plays, but there is no obvious division, the end of the first act alone being noted. The first part is corrected by Bale and the latter half is in his handwriting, but his name nowhere occurs. In the list of his works, however, he gives a play _De Joanne Anglorum Rege_, written _in idiomate materno_.
But Bale's most important work is _Illustrium majoris Britanniae scriptorum, hoc est, Angliae, Cambriae, ac Scotiae Summarium ..._ (Ipswich and Wesel, for John Overton, 1548, 1549). This contained five centuries, but another edition, almost entirely rewritten and containing fourteen centuries, was printed at Basel with the title _Scriptorum illustrium majoris Britanniae ... Catalogus_ (1557-1559). The chronological catalogue of British authors and their works was partly founded on the _Collectanea_ and _Commentarii_ of John Leland, but Bale was an indefatigable collector and worker, and himself examined many of the valuable libraries of the Augustinian and Carmelite houses before their dissolution. In his notebook he records as an instance of the wholesale destruction in progress: "I have bene also at Norwyche, our second citye of name, and there all the library monuments are turned to the use of their grossers, candelmakers, sopesellers, and other worldly occupiers ... As much have I saved there and in certen other places in Northfolke and Southfolke concerning the authors names and titles of their workes, as I could, and as much wold I have done through out the whole realm, yf I had been able to have borne the charges, as I am not." His work is therefore invaluable, in spite of the inaccuracies and the abuse lavished on Catholic writers, for it contains much information that would otherwise have been hopelessly lost.
A list of Bale's works is to be found in _Athenae Cantabrigienses_ (vol. i. pp. 227 et seq.). Beside the reprints already mentioned, _The Examinations of Lord Cobham, William Thorpe and Anne Askewe, &c._ 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_ (Clarendon Press, 1902), forming