Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pullain, John
PULLAIN, PULLAYNE, or PULLEYNE, JOHN (1517–1565), divine and poet, a native of Yorkshire, was educated at New College, Oxford, of which he was either clerk or chaplain, or both successively (Wood, Athenae Oxon. i. 345). He graduated B.A. in 1540 (from New College) and M.A. in February 1543–4. In 1547 he was admitted senior student of Christ Church. He made some reputation as a writer of Latin and English poetry, and became a frequent preacher and a zealous reformer. On 7 Jan. 1552–3, being then B.D., he was admitted to the rectory of St. Peter's, Cornhill (Strype, Memorials, ii. ii. 272), but was deprived of it on Mary's accession, when, for a time, he preached secretly in the parish (Foxe, Acts and Mon. viii. 738, where St. Michael, Cornhill, is given for St. Peter). He joined friends in Geneva in 1554, and co-operated in the Genevan translation of the Bible. In 1557 he was secretly in England under the name of Smith, acted as chaplain to the Duchess of Suffolk [see Bertie, Catherine], and held services at Colchester as well as in Cornhill. Stephen Morris laid an information against him before Bishop Bonner (ib. viii. 384; Strype, Memorials, in. ii. 64). He escaped again to Geneva, and was there as late as 15 Dec. 1558, when he signed the letter of the Genevan exile church to other English churches on the continent, recommending reconciliation (Strype, Annals, i. i. 152; Troubles at Frankfort, p. 188). Returning to England on Elizabeth's accession, he was restored to St. Peter's, Cornhill, but almost immediately incurred Elizabeth's wrath for preaching without licence, contrary to her proclamation (Acts of the Privy Council, 1558; Strype, Annals, i. i. 63). Pullain's name, however, appears in a list of persons suggested for preferment in 1559 (ib. I. i. 229). On 13 Dec. in that year he was admitted, on the queen's presentation, to the archdeaconry of Colchester, and on 8 March following (1559-60) to the rectory of Copford, Essex. He resigned his Cornhill living on 15 Nov. 1560 (Newcourt, ii. 192). On 12 Sept. 1561 he was installed prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral. As a member of the lower house in the convocation of 1562 he advocated Calvinistic views (Strype, Annals, I. i. 512). He died in the summer of 1565. He had married in Edward VI's reign, but some of the relatives sought to deprive his children of his property on the ground that they were illegitimate.
Pullain contributed a metrical rendering of the 148th and 149th Psalms to the earlier editions of Sternhold and Hopkins's version (1549 et seq.) The latter psalm is printed in 'Select Poetry' published by the Parker Society (ii. 495). He is known to have written other versa/but none of it has survived. Warton quotes as by Pullain a stanza from William Baldwin's 'Balades of Salomon' (1549). Bale, who seems to have had some personal knowledge of Pullain, assigns to him a 'Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs' [see Golding, Arthur; Gilby, Anthony], a 'Tract against the Arians,' histories of Judith, Susannah, and Esther, and a translation into English verse of Ecclesiastes, none of which are known to survive.
[Calfhill's Works (Parker Soc.), p. vii; Le Neve's Fasti; Addit. MS. 24491; Hazlitt's Handbook; Warton 's Engl. Poetry; Wood's Fasti, i. 111, 115, Athenae, i. 345; Bale's Script. Angl. ix. 83; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Lansd. MS. 981, f. 26; Davids's Nonconformity in Essex.]