Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Buckenham, Robert
BUCKENHAM, ROBERT (fl. 1530), was prior of the Dominican or Black Friars at Cambridge, in which university he took the degrees of B.D. in 1524 and D.D. in 1531, when he became archdeacon of Lewes. When Latimer was preaching at Cambridge in 1529, in favour of an English bible and other religious innovations, Buckenham was one of his principal opponents, and, in answer to Latimer's sermon on the cards, preached on ‘Christmas dice,’ using the terms cinq and quater as suggestive of the four doctors of the church and five texts of scripture, but did not succeed in silencing him (see Demaus, Tyndale, 431). His adherence to the papal supremacy and the old form of religion rendered it expedient for him to leave England. In 1534 he went to Edinburgh, and stayed for some time in the Black Friars convent there. In March 1535 he crossed the sea to Louvain to assist in the prosecution of William Tyndale, the translator of the Bible into English, who was then in prison at Vilvoorde. He and another Englishman, named Harry Philippes, busied themselves in translating into Latin the English papers found in Tyndale's possession, which were useful as evidence of heresy. No further particulars of his life appear to have been recorded, except that he was the author of a book ‘De Reconciliatione locorum Sacræ Scripturæ,’ of which a copy was in the English College at Rome. Foxe tells us that he was nicknamed ‘Domine labia,’ but does not mention the reason why he was so called. A Dr. William Bokenham, who was master of Gonville Hall from 1514 to 1536, has sometimes been confused with the subject of this notice, and Tanner's statement that Robert Buckenham was chancellor of the university of Cambridge is an error of the same kind, Dr. William Buckmaster having held the office of vice-chancellor in 1529.
[Cal. of State Papers of Hen. VIII, vol. vii.; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Foxe, edit. 1847, vii. 449, 771; MS. Cott. Galba B. x. f. 102; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. i. 61; Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, ii. 102, &c.; Demaus's Latimer, 68; Tanner MS. 402, Bibl. Bodl.]Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.41
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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| 199 | ii | 16 f.e. | Buckenham, Robert: after 1531 insert In the latter year he became archdeacon of Lewes |