was again a receiver of petitions in the parliament that met on 15 April 1523, but two days later he resigned the clerkship of the parliaments to (Sir) Brian Tuke [q. v.] In 1526 Taylor was sent ambassador to Francis I, nominally to congratulate him on his release from captivity, but really to induce him to violate the treaty he had just concluded with Charles V. (For details of this mission see Letters and Papers, vol. iv., which contains over two hundred references to Taylor; some of his correspondence is extant in Cotton. MS. Caligula D. ix. 219–32; four letters are printed in Ellis's Orig. Letters, II. i. 333–43; see also State Papers of Henry VIII, vols. i. vi. and vii.) In the autumn Bishop John Clerk [q. v.] succeeded him as ambassador, and on 26 June 1527 Taylor was rewarded for his services by being made master of the rolls. In the same year he was sent to invest Francis I with the order of the Garter (Rymer, xiv. 175). He was also named one of the commissioners to try the validity of Henry VIII's marriage with Catherine of Arragon. In 1531 he was again sent ambassador to France, in succession to Sir Francis Bryan [q. v.] He returned in 1533, and in that year was spoken of as a likely candidate for the next vacant bishopric. On 6 Oct. 1534 he resigned the mastership of the rolls, which was bestowed on Cromwell, and he died before the end of the year (cf. Newcourt, i. 249). Taylor erected a chapel on the site of the cottage in which he was born, and on the walls is an inscription to his memory.
[Harleian and Cotton. MSS. passim; Lansdowne MS. 979, f. 122; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vols. i–vi.; State Papers, Henry VIII, 1830–40; Rymer's Fœdera; Despatches of Giustiniani; Dugdale's Orig. Jurid.; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Angl., ed. Hardy; Rutland Papers and Trevelyan Papers (Camden Soc.); Fiddes's Wolsey, pp. 186, 385, 532; Strype's Works (index); Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Wood's Fasti, i. 62; Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII; Plot's Staffordshire, pp. 277–96; Harwood's Lichfield, pp. 213, 228; Shaw's Staffordshire, i. 114; State Trials, i. 312; Parl. Hist. iii. 25; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 49, 529; Foss's Judges, v. 235; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Lingard's Hist. and Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII; Colvile's Warwickshire Worthies; Simms's Bibl. Staffordiensis.]
TAYLOR, JOHN (1503?–1554), bishop of Lincoln, born about 1503, was probably a relative, and possibly a son, of John Taylor (d. 1534) [q. v.], master of the rolls, to whose arms his own were very similar. He was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1523–4, and M.A. in 1527. He was elected fellow of his college about 1524, was bursar from 1527 to 1529, and proctor in 1532. On 14 April 1536 he was admitted rector of St. Peter's, Cornhill, on the presentation of Sir William Butts [q. v.], the king's physician (cf. Wriothesley, Chron. i. 72). A sermon which he preached here in 1538 led John Lambert (d. 1538) [q. v.] into controversy about the eucharist, and Lambert's death is said to have so affected Taylor that he became an enemy to all persecution. In the same year he was elected dean of Lincoln, and on 3 Feb. 1538–9 he was collated to the prebend of Bedford Minor. In 1540 he signed the letter of the clergy to Henry VIII pronouncing null his marriage with Anne of Cleves (State Papers, Hen. VIII, i. 633).
On 4 July 1538, on Henry VIII's nomination, Taylor was elected master of St. John's College, Cambridge, proceeding D.D. at the same time. The first two years of his mastership were peaceful, and Ascham congratulated him on the success of his rule (Epistolæ, lib. ii. No. 12). But the preferment of a stranger to the mastership alienated the other fellows, and the dissensions between them and Taylor led in 1542 to a visitation of the college by Bishop Goodrich of Ely (Baker, Hist. of St. John's College, ed. Mayor, i. 115–18). The result was the restoration of three fellows who had been expelled; but a further struggle followed over Taylor's attempt, backed up by court influence, to reduce the number of fellowships held by natives of the northern counties; eventually in March 1546–7 Taylor was compelled to resign the mastership (ib. i. 119–23).
Meanwhile Taylor's adoption of reformed doctrines involved him in difficulties with the dominant catholic party at the court. In 1542 he had been selected by Cranmer to assist in preparing a revised version of the bible, and in June 1546 he preached a sermon at Bury St. Edmunds which was brought before the notice of the council (Acts of the Privy Council, 1542–7, p. 467). Taylor was imprisoned for the opinions expressed in it, but soon retracted. On 10 Sept. 1546 Wriothesley, St. John, and Gardiner informed the king that Taylor ‘uppon further conference with Mr. Shaxton hath subscribed all Maister Shaxton's articles and dooth nowe shewe himself very penitent. He was never indicted, nor did never directly, but by conclusions, affirme anything against the most Blessed Sacrament of th' Aultre, wherupon he is putt to libertye, with bonde not to departe from
