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Ralph Baines or "Bayne" (c. 1504 – 18 November 1559) was the last Roman Catholic Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, in England.

Early life

Baines was born around 1504 at Knowsthorpe in Yorkshire. Educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, he was ordained priest at Ely in 1519. He came out against Hugh Latimer, and opposed Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, being incited to the latter by John Fisher.

He was rector of Hardwick, Cambridgeshire, until 1544; but he had left the country by 1538.

Hebraist

Baines was a Hebraist, being a college lecturer in Hebrew at St John's. He went to Paris and became professor of Hebrew at the Collège de France from 1549 to 1554.

He was the author of the work Compendium Michlol (also with the Hebrew title, Ḳiẓẓur ha-Ḥeleḳ Rishon ha-Miklol), containing a Latin abstract of the first part of David Ḳimḥi's Hebrew grammar, and dealing methodically with the letters, reading, nouns, regular and irregular verbs, prefixes and suffixes (Paris, 1554).

Bishop

In 1554, Baines returned to England and was consecrated as Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, on 18 November 1554.

He vigorously opposed the Protestant Reformers, and features largely in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, conducting many examinations with his Chancellor, Anthony Draycot. His chancellor was involved, for instance, in the burning of a young blind woman, Joan Waste, for heresy in Derby. He was one of the eight defenders of Catholic doctrine at the Westminster Conference of 1558/9.

On the accession of Elizabeth I of England, he was deprived of his bishopric (21 June 1559) and committed to the care of Edmund Grindal, the Protestant Bishop of London, becoming one of eleven imprisoned bishops (researches of G. Philips support a theory that, though nominally a guest, Baines was in fact a strict prisoner). His captivity lasted until 18 November 1559, when, in the words of fellow Roman Catholic John Pitts, Baines "died an illustrious Confessor of the Lord".

Works

• Prima Rudimenta in linguam Hebraicam (Paris, 1550)
• Compendium Michol, hoc est absolutissimæ grammatices Davidis Chimhi (Paris, 1554)
• In Proverbia Salomonis (Paris, 1555).

References

• Nicholas Sanders, Report to Cardinal Moroni, 1561 (Cath. Record Soc. Pubs., 1905), I
• John Pitts, De Angliae Scriptoribus (1623)
• Charles Dodd, Church History (1688), Pt. III, ii, art. 3
• Charles Henry Cooper, Athenæ Cantabrigienses, 1,202
• Joseph Gillow, Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath. (London, 1885)
• Thomas Edward Bridgett and Thomas Francis Knox, Q. Eliz. and the Cath. Hierarchy (London, 1889)
• G. E. Phillips, Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy (London, 1905)
• Johann Christoph Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebrœa, i. 308.

Notes

1. Bayne, Baynes, Banes; Rudolphus, Rudolph, Rodolph, Rodolphus Baynus.
2. "Baynes, Ralph (BNS517R)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
3. Richard Rex, The Theology of John Fisher (1991), p. 176.
4. History – Hardwick village Archived 29 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine
5. Peter Marshall, Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England (2006), p. 232.
6. The Circulation of Knowledge in Humanist Europe – CNRS Web site – CNRS
7. http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/apparatus/person_glossaryB.html, under Ralph Bayne.
8. John Foxe's Book of Martyrs Archived 16 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine
9. Blind Joan (22) Is Executed Archived 20 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine, HeadlineHistory.co.uk, accessed February 2009
10. Bishops | British History Online

External links

• Ralph Baines, article in the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Source, Jewish Encyclopedia

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Baynus (Bayne), Rudolphus". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Ralph Baines". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

• Bishops of Lichfield
• 16th-century English Roman Catholic bishops
• Christian Hebraists
• 1504 births
• 1559 deaths
• Academic staff of the Collège de France
• Clergy from Leeds
• Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge