JOHN, bishop of Ossory, in Ireland, was born at Cove, near Dunwich in Suffolk, in the year 1495. At twelve years of age he was entered in the monastery of Carmelites at Norwich, and thence sent some years afterwards to Jesus College, Oxford. He was educated a Roman Catholic, but was afterwards converted to the Protestant religion by Thomas Lord Wentworth. On the death of Lord Cromwell the favourite of Henry VIII., who had protected him from the persecutions of the Romish clergy, he was obliged to fly, and took refuge in Flanders, where he continued eight years. Soon after the accession of Edward VI. he was recalled; and being first presented to the living of Bishop's Stocke (Bishopstocke), in Hampshire, in 1552 he was nominated to the see of Ossory. During his residence in Ireland he was remarkably assiduous in propagating the Protestant doctrines; but with little success, and frequently at the hazard of his life. On the accession of Queen Mary the tide of opposition became so powerful that, to avoid assassination, he embarked for Holland; but was so unfortunate as to be first taken by a Dutch man-of-war, and robbed by the captain of all his effects; then forced by stress of weather into St Ives in Cornwall, where he was arrested on suspicion of treason. Having obtained his release, however, after a few days' confinement, the ship in which he had embarked anchored in Dover road, where he was again seized on a false accusation, but soon liberated. On his arrival in Holland he was kept prisoner for three weeks, but at length obtained his liberty on paying L30. From Holland he travelled to Basil in Switzerland, where he continued till Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne. After his return to England he was in 1560 made prebendary of Canterbury; where he died in November 1563, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.

He was the author of many works, the most noted of which is his collection of British Biography, entitled Illuminum Majoris Britanniae Scriptorum Catalogus, a Japheto semissioni Noah filio ad An. Dom. 1559. This work was first published in quarto in 1548, and afterwards, with various additions, in folio, 1557-59. Ames and Herbert have given a long list of his other works; and Tanner has given a list of his manuscripts, with the names of the places where they are preserved.