Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bryan, John (d.1545)
BRYAN, JOHN (d. 1545), logician, was born in London and educated at Eton whence he was elected in 1510 to King's College Cambridge (B.A. 1515, M.A. 1518). He gained the reputation of being one of the most learned men of his time in the Greek and Latin tongues. For two years he was ordinary reader of logic in the public schools, and in his lectures he wholly disregarded the knotty subtleties of the realists and nominalists who then disturbed the university with their frivolous altercations. This displeased pleased many but recommended him to the notice of Erasmus who highly extols his learning He was instituted to the rectory of Shellow Bowells Essex in 1523 and died about October 1545 He wrote a history ot France but it does not appear to have been published.
[Add. MS. 53l4. f. 166; Newcoart's Repertorium. ii. 522; Knight's Life of Erasmus, 146; Cooper's Atetnæ Cantab. i. 87.]