Yonge, vicar of Otterton, Devonshire, and his wife Catherina, daughter of Thomas Crawley-Boevey of Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire. He was born in Devonshire in 1794, and educated at Eton and Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. on 13 May 1815, M.A. on 22 Oct. 1817, M.B. on 8 June 1819, and M.D. on 20 June 1821. He was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians of London on 30 Sept. 1822, practised in Plymouth, was physician to the Devonshire and Cornwall Hospital, and was for many years one of the chief physicians of the west of England. He married his cousin, Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Crawley-Boevey, bart. He died on 3 Jan. 1870.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. iii. 263; Burke's Landed Gentry, s.v. ‘Yonge of Puslinch;’ Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, s.v. ‘Boevey.’]
YONGE, JOHN (1467–1516), master of the rolls and diplomatist, was born in 1467 at Heyford in Oxfordshire. The manor of Heyford was given by William of Wykeham to New College, Oxford, as part of its endowment. Yonge was admitted to Winchester College as scholar in 1478, and became scholar of New College and D.C.L. He was fellow of New College from 1485 to 1500, when on 15 Aug. he was presented by the convent of Abingdon to the church of St. Martin's, Oxford. On 17 March 1502 he was admitted rector of St. Stephen's, Walbrook (Reg. Lond. Hill, f. 42), and on 28 Jan. 1503 was commissioned by the archbishop of Canterbury as judge of the court of prerogatives for the diocese of Canterbury (Reg. Cant. Warham, f. 6d). On 19 March 1504 he was collated to the church of St. Mary-le-Bow by Archbishop Warham, and held the living till 13 May 1514 (ib. ff. 323–354).
On 4 Aug. 1504 Yonge was commissioned, together with John Taylor (d. 1534) [q. v.], Robert Rydon, clerk of the council, John Clerk, governor of the English merchants in Flanders, and two others, to conclude a treaty of mercantile alliance with Philip, archduke of Austria (Rymer, xiii. 105). He was next employed to take the oaths in the Low Countries of persons nominated by the treaty of 20 March 1506 to swear as to the amount and payment of the dowry and position of the Archduchess Margaret of Savoy, who was affianced to Henry VII (ib. xiii. 127, 146, 154, 155). He was, as a reward for these services, raised to the office of master of the rolls by Henry VII on 23 Jan. 1507–8 (Pat. 23 Hen. VII, pt. ii. M. 7). He was commissioned in July 1508 to go with Sir Thomas Brandon [q. v.] on an embassy to the emperor (Andreas, Hist. of Hen. VII, Rolls Ser. p. 125). Later in the same year he was associated with Wolsey in the conferences preparatory to the treaty of Cambray. Wolsey in a letter to Henry VII says: ‘The last day of October, in the town of Antwerp, your ambassador … came to the emperor's presence. … The master of the rolls began hys oracion, which was uttered and pronounced very wel and dystynctly with good spryt and bolness’ (Letters, &c., of the Reign of Richard III and Henry VII, Rolls Ser. i. 445). Henry VII in his will, dated 10 April 1509, named Yonge one of his seven executors.
Henry VIII on his accession confirmed Yonge's appointment as master of the rolls by a patent dated 11 June 1509, by which he was granted ‘the house of the converts’ to dwell in, and a tun of Gascon wine annually, with other privileges (Pat. Hen. VIII, pt. ii. M. 5). The new king also enriched him with further ecclesiastical preferments. On 28 Nov. 1511 he was made prebendary of Holborn in St. Paul's Cathedral, but resigned it on the following 11 Feb. in order to take up the better prebend of Newington (Reg. Lond. Fitzjames, ff. 31 d, 32). On 16 Dec. 1512 he was appointed dean of the collegiate church of St. Mary's, Leicester (Pat. 4 Hen. VIII, pt. i. M. 26); and on 15 July next he was presented by the abbot and convent of Ramsey to the church of Therfield in Hertfordshire, which he held till his death (Cussans, Hertfordshire, i. 126).
Henry VIII also employed him on frequent diplomatic missions. In 1511, after the dissolution of the league of Cambray, Henry in July sent him ‘on a monitory embassage to Louis, requiring him to desist from the war against the pope,’ a demand which Louis disregarded. Wolsey, who formed a low opinion of Yonge's conduct of this mission, wrote to Fox, bishop of Winchester: ‘Never had man worse cheer than he in France, and that he had done nothing touching the matter wherewith he was charged’ (Fiddes, Life of Wolsey, p. 70). While on this embassy he was paid twenty shillings a day. In consequence of Louis's refusal, Henry declared war.
During the progress of the unfortunate campaign Yonge, Sir Edward Poynings [q. v.] and Sir Thomas Boleyn were sent to Brussels as ambassadors to win the alliance of the Emperor Maximilian. They carried on the negotiations with the emperor and his daughter Margaret in person from June to September, but Maximilian avoided giving any definite promise. Yonge returned home, landing at Dover on 30 Sept.; but on 20 Dec. he was again commissioned with Poynings, Boleyn,
