Beacon, Thomas

, one of the English reformers, was a native of Norfolk, or Suffolk, and educated at Cambridge, where he took his bachelor’s degree in 1530. He was presented on May 24, 1547, to the rectory of St. Stephen Walbrook, ol which he was deprived in 1554, and imprisoned twice in queen Mary’s time, but escaped to Marpurg. From Strasburgh, in the same year, we find him addressing an “Epistle to the Faithful in England,” exhorting them to patient perseverance in the truth. After queen Mary’s death, he returned to England, and in 1560 was preferred to the rectory of Buckland, in Hertfordshire, and in 1563 to that of St. Dionis Backchurch, in London. He was also a prebend of the fourth stall in Canterbury cathedral, and had been, in Cranmer’s time, chaplain to that celebrated prelate. Tanner’s account of his promotions is somewhat different. We learn from Strype, in his life of Grindall, that he objected at first, but afterwards conformed to the | clerical dress, some articles of which at that time were much scrupled by the reformers who had lived abroad. He died at Canterbury, about 1570, in his sixtieth year. In the Heerologia, a work not much to be depended on, it is said that he was professor of divinity at Oxford, an assertion contrary to all other authority. He wrote:

I. “Counts Dominica et Missse Papistical comparatio,” Basil, 1559, 8vo. 2. “Various treatises,” fol. printed by Day, 1560. 3. “The Acts of Christe and Antichriste,” Lond. 1577, 12mo. 4. “The reliques of Rome,” by Day, 1563, 16mo. On the opposite side to the title is the head of the author, with the inscription, “Ætatis suae 41, 1553,” which makes the time of his birth 1512; and at the time of his persecution in 1541, he must have been about twenty-nine years of age. 5. “Postills upon the sundry Gospels,” Lond. 4to, 1566. 6. “His works,” Lond. 1564, 2 vols. 7. “The Sick man’s salve, or directions in sickness, and how to dye,” Edin. 1613, 8vo. It has been said that he was the first Englishman that wrote against bowing at the name of Jesus, but no such work is enumerated in the list of his writings. ¹