Peter, a famous master in the art of penmanship, and one of the first inventors of short-hand writing. He was born in 1547, and is described by Anthony Wood as "a most dexterous person in his profession, to the great wonder of scholars and others." We are also informed that "he spent several years in sciences among Oxonians, particularly, as it seems, in Gloucester Hall; but that study, which he used for a diversion only, proved at length an employment of profit." He is mentioned for his skill in micrography, or miniature writing, in Hollingshead's Chronicle, anno 1575; and Mr Evelyn has also celebrated his wonderful skill in this delicate operation of the hand. "Hadrian Junius, speaking as a miracle of somebody who wrote the Apostles' Creed and the beginning of St John's Gospel within the compass of a farthing: what would he have said," adds Mr Evelyn, "of our famous Peter Bales, who, in the year 1575, wrote the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, Decalogue, with two short prayers in Latin, his own name, motto, day of the month, year of the Lord, and reign of the queen, to whom he presented it at Hampton Court, all of it written within the circle of a single penny, incased in a ring and borders of gold, and covered with a crystal so accurately wrought as to be very plainly legible; to the great admiration of her Majesty, the whole privy-council, and several ambassadors then at court?" He was likewise very dexterous in imitating handwriting, and about 1576 was employed by Secretary Walsingham in certain political manoeuvres. We find him at the head of a school near the Old Bailey, London, in 1590, in which year he published his Writing Schoolmaster, in three parts. In 1595 he had a great trial of skill in the Blackfriars with one Daniel Johnson, for a golden pen of L20 value, and won it; and a contemporary author further relates that he had also the arms of calligraphy given him, which are azure, a pen or. In 1597 he republished his Writing Schoolmaster, which was in such high reputation that no less than eighteen copies of commendatory verses, composed by learned and ingenious men of that time, were printed before it. Wood says that he was involved in Essex's treasons in 1600; but this seems to be a mistake, for he was only engaged, and that very innocently, in serving the treacherous purposes of one of the earl's mercenary dependants. We know little more of this curious person than that he seems to have died about the year 1610.