Allen, John

, archbishop of Dublin in the reign of Henry VIII. was first educated at Oxford, whence he | removed to Cambridge, and took the degree of master of arts; or, as Wood rather thinks, that of bachelor of laws. He was afterwards sent to Rome to the pope, by Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, to manage some affairs relating to the church. He continued there about nine years, and was created doctor of laws in some Italian university. On his return he was made chaplain to cardinal Wolsey, and commissary or judge of his court, when he was legate a latere, but he was accused of great dishonesty in the execution of that office. He assisted the cardinal in first visiting and afterwards dissolving forty small monasteries, for the erection of his colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. His church-preferment was considerable. Archbishop Warham gave him Aldyngton, with the chapel annexed, March 6, 1510, in which he was succeeded by Erasmus; and in the following year his grace presented him to Riseburgh, in the deanery of Riseburgh. In 1524 he was presented to the perpetual vicarage of Alborne, and he had, by the favour of Wolsey, the church of Dalby on the Would sin Leicestershire, though it belonged to the master and brethren of the hospital of Burton Lazars. In the latter end of the year 1525, he was incorporated doctor of laws of the university of Oxford; and March 13, 1528, upon the death of Dr. Hugh Inge, he was consecrated archbishop of Dublin, and about the same time was made chancellor of Ireland. In 1534 he was barbarously murdered in an insurrection, by Thomas Fitz-gerald, eldest son of the earl of Kildare, in the fiftieth year of his age. He wrote some treatises on ecclesiastical affairs, which remain in manuscript. 1

1 Wood’s Athens. Gen. Dict. Biog. T?rit. Tanner. Fiddes’s Life of Woley. —Strype’s Memorials, vol. f. pp. 73. 125. Nichols’s Hist, of Leicestershire, vol. III. p.53.