Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/14

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Udall
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Udall

ments of doubtful relevance in arrest of judgment. Sentence of death was passed on him, and he was carried back to prison.

No attempt was made to carry out the monstrous sentence, but Udall remained a prisoner, with small hope of life. The iniquitous procedure excited the resentment of many persons of influence, some of whom had shown sympathy with Udall's religious views in earlier days. Sir Walter Ralegh, the Earl of Essex, and Alexander Nowell, dean of St. Paul's, interested themselves on his behalf, and every effort was made to procure his release. At first the prospect was discouraging. He sued for liberty to go to church; permission was refused him. But a little later a copy of the indictment under which he was convicted, but which he had never seen, was sent him. Acting on the advice of friends, he thereupon framed a form of pardon ‘according to the indictment,’ and his wife presented it with his petition to the council. The papers were referred to Archbishop Whitgift. For a time the archbishop was obdurate. But the agitation in Udall's favour grew, and in March 1592 the governors of the Turkey Company offered to send Udall to Syria as pastor of their agents there if he were released at once (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1591–4, Udall to Burghley, 3 March 1591–2, not 1592–3; Strype, Whitgift, ii. 101–2). The archbishop's scruples were at length overcome, and a pardon was signed by the queen early in June. On 15 June Udall, by the archbishop's direction, informed the lord keeper, Puckering, of that fact. But immediately afterwards Udall fell ill and died. His death was attributed to the cruel and illegal usage to which he had been subjected, and he was long remembered and honoured as a martyr by those who shared his religious convictions. He was buried in the churchyard of St. George's, Southwark. He was survived by his wife and son Ephraim [q. v.]

In the year following Udall's death there appeared at Leyden a valuable grammar and dictionary of the Hebrew tongue by him under the title: ‘מפתח לשון הקודש—that is, The Key of the Holy Tongue’ (Leyden, 12mo, 1593). The first part consists of a Hebrew grammar translated from the Latin of Peter Martinius; the second part supplies ‘a practize’ or exercises on Psalms xxv. and lxv., and the third part is a short dictionary of the Hebrew words of the Bible. The work was prized by James VI of Scotland, who is reported to have inquired for the author on his arrival in England in 1603, and, on learning that he was dead, to have exclaimed, ‘By my soul, then, the greatest scholar of Europe is dead.’

In 1593 also appeared (anonymously in London) the first edition of Udall's ‘Commentarie on the Lamentations of Jeremy;’ other editions are dated in 1595, 1599, and 1637. A Dutch translation by J. Lamstium is dated 1660. Udall's ‘Certaine Sermons, taken out of severall Places of Scripture,’ which was issued in 1596, is a reprint of his volume on the ‘Amendment of Life’ and the ‘Obedience to the Gospel.’ There is erroneously attributed to him an antipapal tract, ‘An Antiquodlibet, or an Advertisement to beware of Secular Priests,’ Middelburg, 12mo, 1602.

[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 148–50; A New Discovery of Old Pontificall Practices for the Maintenance of the Prelates Authority and Hierarchy, evinced by their Tyrannicall Persecution of that Reverend, Learned, Pious, and Worthy Minister of Jesus Christ, Master John Udall, in the Raigne of Queen Elizabeth, London, 1643; Maskell's Hist. of the Martin Mar-Prelate Controversy, London, 1845; Arber's Introductory Sketch to the Martin Mar-Prelate Controversy, London, 1879; Arber's prefaces to his reprints of Udall's Demonstration and Dialogue, 1880; Strype's Life of Whitgift, and Annals; Howell's State Trials, i. 1271; Neal's Puritans, i. 330.]

S. L.

UDALL or UVEDALE, NICHOLAS (1505–1556), dramatist and scholar, born in 1505, was a native of Hampshire. His relationship with the Uvedale family of Wickham in Hampshire, one member of which, living in 1449, bore the christian name of Nicholas, is undetermined (cf. Surrey Archæological Collections, iii. 185). Nicholas was elected a scholar of Winchester College in 1517, when he was described as being twelve years old (Kirby, Winchester Scholars, p. 108). Proceeding to Oxford, he was admitted a scholar of Corpus Christi College on 18 June 1520. He graduated B.A. on 30 May 1524, and became a probationer-fellow of his college on 30 May 1524. He took some part in the college tuition (Fowler, Hist. Corpus Christi Coll. Oxford, Oxf. Hist. Soc. pp. 86, 89, 370–1). In 1526 and the following years he purchased books of a Lutheran tendency of Thomas Garret, an Oxford bookseller, who personally sympathised with Lutheran doctrines. Udall thus gained the reputation of being one of the earliest adherents of the protestant movement among Oxford tutors (Foxe, Actes, ed. Townsend, v. 421 seq.). As a consequence, it is said, he was not permitted to take the degree of M.A. until 1534—ten years after his graduation. Meanwhile he made some reputation in the uni-