Bullock, Henry

, a man of learning in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the friend of Erasmus, who corresponded with him by the name of Bovillus, was a native of Berkshire, according to Fuller. He was educated at Queen’s college, Cambridge, where he took his bachelor’s degree in 1504, and his master’s in 1507, and was chosen fellow in the last mentioned year. He commenced D. D. in 1520, and was vice-chancellor in 1524—5. He was esteemed a man of abilities, and chosen by cardinal Wolsey to answer Luther. The cardinal also made him his chaplain, but we do not find that he raised him to any higher dignity, yet the oration he spoke in favour of the cardinal, now printed in Fiddes’s life of that great churchman, seems to have merited a higher reward. By his letters to Erasmus, it appears that he was an able Grecian at a time when that language was little known. In 1513, in conjunction with Mr. Walden, he read a mathematical lecture, and had a salary from the university for it. He was also one of the twelve preachers sent out by that university in 1515. The biographers of Erasmus profess their ignorance of the time of his death. Tanner fixes it in 1526, but Dodd says he was living in 1530. He wrote, 1. “De Captivitate Babylonica contra Lutherum.” 2. “Epistolse et Orationes.” 3. “De Serpentibus siticulosis,” a translation from the Greek of Lucian, printed at Cambridge, 1521, 4to. 4. “Oratio coram Archiepiscopo Eboracensi,” ibid. 1521, s 4to. ²