Baynes, Ralph

, an English prelate, was a native of Yorkshire, and educated in St. John’s college, Cambridge, where he attained considerable reputation, as an expounder of the Scriptures, and as a Greek and Hebrew scholar. Having taken his degree of D. D. he went over to Paris, and was for some time royal professor of Hebrew. He remained abroad during the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII. and the whole of Edward VI. but upon the accession of queen Mary, with whose principles he coincided, he was consecrated bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. When queen Elizabeth succeeded, he was deprived, and for some time imprisoned, but lived afterwards in the bishop of London’s house. He died in 1559, of the stone. Fuller says, in allusion to the persecutions he occasioned in his diocese, that although he was as bad as Christopherson, he was better than Bonner. He wrote “Prima Rudimenta in linguam Hebraicam,” Paris, 1550, 4to, and “Comment, in proverbia Salomonis, lib. III.” ibid, and same year, fol. ²