Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pendleton, Henry
PENDLETON, HENRY (d. 1557), Roman catholic controversialist, is said to have been born at Manchester, and to have come of a Lancashire family, a statement due perhaps to the identity of his name with two Lancashire villages. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, about 1538, graduating B.A. on 16 Nov. 1542, M.A. on 18 Oct. 1544, and D.D. on 18 July 1552. During the reign of Henry VIII he made himself famous by preaching against Lutheranism, but on the accession of Edward VI he adopted protestant views, and was one of the first itinerant preachers appointed by the Earl of Derby ‘to preach the doctrines of the Reformation in the ignorant and popish parts of the country’ (Dixon, Hist. Church of England, iii. 176). In 1552 he became vicar of Blymhill, Staffordshire. After the accession of Mary he confirmed Laurence Saunders [q. v.] in his protestant opinions, and boasted of his own determination to maintain them. But he soon saw reason to change, and became a zealous Romanist. He received many preferments in 1554 as a reward for his conversion; he was collated to the prebends of Reculverland, St. Paul's (11 April), Ulveton, Lichfield (15 June), and received the living of Todenham, Gloucestershire, and St. Martin Outwich, London (14 Feb. 1554–1555). About the same time he became chaplain to Bonner, and took a prominent part in disputations with protestants who were brought before the bishop; among those with whom he argued were Thomas Mountain [q. v.], John Bradford (1510?–1555) [q. v.], and Bartholomew Green [q. v.] The substance of these discussions is printed in Foxe's ‘Actes and Monuments.’ Pendleton won some fame as a preacher. On one occasion, while preaching at St. Paul's Cross, on 10 June 1554, and making some severe strictures on the protestants, he was shot at. He resigned the vicarage of St. Martin Outwich on 1 April 1556, when he was admitted to the living of St. Stephen's, Walbrook. He died in September 1557, repenting, according to Foxe, his popish errors, and ‘being brought with all Paul's choir’ to be buried at St. Stephen's, Walbrook, on 21 Sept. (Strype, Eccl. Mem. iii. ii. 18). Pendleton is author of two of the homilies published by Bonner in 1555, respectively entitled ‘Of the Church what it is’ and ‘Of the Authoritie of the Church.’ He is described as ‘an able man, handsome and athletic, possessed of a fine clear voice, of ready speech and powerful utterance; his preaching was in popularity and influence second only to that of Bradford’ (Halley, Lancashire, i. 68).
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 325, 371; Strype's Eccl. Mem. III. i. 213, ii. 2, 18; Foxe's Actes and Mon. vi. 628–30, vii. 184–6, viii. 635; Bonner's Homilies, 1555, 8vo; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 589; Le Neve's Fasti, i. 632, ii. 431; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 204; Dodd's Church Hist. i. 511; Harwood's Lichfield, p. 239; Rymer's Fœdera, xv. 345; Sutton's Lancashire Authors, p. 91; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Lansd. MS. 981, f. 7; Simms's Bibl. Staffordiensis; Dixon's Church Hist. passim; Halley's Lancashire Puritanism; Hollingworth's Mancuniensis, ed. 1839, pp. 65–6.]