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John Cheke

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Origins and earlier career

The Cheke or Cheeke family is said to have originated in Northamptonshire and to be descended from Sir William de Butevillar. At the time of John's birth, the family seat had been, for more than a century, at Mottistone in the Isle of Wight.

John's father, Peter Cheke of Cambridge (the son of Robert Cheke of Mottistone), was Esquire Bedell of the University of Cambridge from 1509 until his death in 1529. John's mother was Agnes Duffield, daughter of Andrew Duffield of Cambridge: John was born in that city in 1514, and had five sisters, Ann, Alice, Elizabeth, Magdalen, and Mary. His grammatical education was begun by John Morgan, M.A. He was educated at St John's College, where he proceeded to receive a B.A. in 1529, and obtained a Fellowship. He commenced with an M.A. in 1533. His tutor was George Day, who became an opponent of the Edwardian Reformation.

At university, Cheke, and his friend, Thomas Smith (a student of Civil Law at Queens' College), were thought so outstanding that each was granted an exhibition by King Henry to support them in their studies. Both were largely impressed by the classical learning of John Redman, who had studied in Paris, and sought to emulate him. Both Queens' College (where the influence of Erasmus remained) and St John's fostered Reformist principles which Cheke and Smith embraced.

During the early 1530s Cheke and Smith studied together privately to restore proper definition to the pronunciation of ancient Greek diphthongs, which by custom had become obscured. The language itself, its cadences and inflexions of meaning, thereby gained new life and the works of the ancient scholars and orators were freshly received and understood. Smith, giving Greek lectures from 1533, around 1535 began to make public trial of these effects, and soon gained a following. Smith's student John Poynet, succeeding his tutor, maintained the new pronunciation in his lectures: both Cheke and Smith began to coach students in their method, and the Plutus of Aristophanes was acted at St. John's in the new manner. After Poynet as Greek Reader came Roger Ascham, Cheke's student, who read Isocrates, at first disputing but afterwards coming round fully to the innovations, which also won the approval of John Redman.

Academic manoeuvres

Through the mediation of Matthew Parker, Cheke obtained the support of Anne Boleyn for his student William Bill to continue his studies. After a year as Master of St John's, and as University Vice-Chancellor, George Day was appointed by King Henry to be provost of King's College in 1538, Smith having become University Orator in 1537 in succession to him. In 1540, at the King's creation of the Regius Professorships, Smith was made Professor of Law, Cheke Professor of Greek, and John Blythe (of King's College) Professor of Physick. Blythe married Alice, one of Cheke's sisters, before 1536, and in 1541 William Cecil (afterwards Lord Burleigh), Cheke's distinguished student, married Mary Cheke, another. (Mary Cecil died two years later, leaving Cecil with a son, Thomas Cecil.) In 1542 one "Mistress Cheke" was still resident in the Cheke home at Market Hill, Cambridge.

In June 1542, Bishop Gardiner, as chancellor of the university, issued his Edict to all who recognized his authority that the sounds customarily used for the pronunciation of Greek or Latin should not be changed by anyone, and gave a list of them with phonetic explanations. He pronounced severe and potentially exclusionist penalties at all levels of the academic hierarchy for those who contravened this ruling, and further wrote to the vice-chancellor requiring that his edict be observed. Cheke, as one of the principal targets of Gardiner's disapproval, entered into a correspondence of seven letters with him, but the Bishop remained inflexible. However the seeds of his method had been sown, and took root. At that time the letters remained unpublished.

In that year Cheke was incorporated M.A. at the University of Oxford, being made a canon of King Henry VIII's College. In 1544 he succeeded Smith as Public Orator in the University of Cambridge. Day, consecrated Bishop of Chichester in 1543, remained provost of King's. At this time Cheke prepared his Latin translation (dedicated to the King) of the De Apparatu Bellico of the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI, often sharing and talking over his work with Roger Ascham. Thomas Hoby was then one of his pupils. Cheke's reading and thought in the Greek Histories, and his use of them to extract examples of policy and conduct, can be studied in his annotations to print copies (from the Aldine Press) of Herodotus and Thucydides.

In 1543 and 1545, his Latin versions of the homilies of St John Chrysostom were published, opening with a letter of dedication to his patron the King. On 10 June 1544 Cheke was appointed tutor to the future King Edward VI of England, as a supplement to his tutor Dr Richard Cox, to teach him "of toungues, of the scripture, of philosophie and all liberal sciences" (as the Prince wrote in his Journal), and commenced his duties at Hampton Court soon afterwards. At the Prince's invitation, the young Henry Hastings shared in his studies. Roger Ascham felt strongly Cheke's absence from the university, where his example was so inspirational. Special interest has been found in Cheke's lengthy preface to his Latin translation of Plutarch's De Superstitione, prepared as a New Year's gift for the King in 1545 or 1546.

Edward's tutor in French, the Huguenot Jean Belmain, was Cheke's nephew by marriage. Ascham's pupil William Grindal was, at his recommendation to Cheke, chosen to read Greek to Princess Elizabeth, until his untimely death in 1548. By that time William Bill was Master of St John's, and John Redman Master of the newly-founded Trinity College (1546), in which Bill succeeded him in 1551.

On 11 May 1547, Cheke married Mary, daughter of Richard Hill (formerly Sergeant of the Wine-cellar to Henry VIII) and now stepdaughter of Sir John Mason. Cheke's religious and scholarly purpose bore fruit in the highest quarters. Gerard Langbaine the elder expressed it thus:

"under God M. Cheek was a speciall instrument of the propagation of the Gospell, & that Religion which we now professe in this Kingdome. For he not only sowed the seeds of that Doctrine in the heart of Prince EDWARD, which afterwards grew up into a generall Reformation when he came to be King, but by his meanes the same saveing truth was gently instilled into the Lady ELIZABETH, by those who by his procurement were admitted to be the Guides of her younger Studies."

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