Myers Literary Guide:
The North-East
 

JOHN UDALL (1560 - 1592)

Udall was a Puritan divine who contended against the bishops in his three volumes of sermons, as well as in powerful anonymous pamphlets. After being dismissed from his living in Kingston on Thames in July 1588, he was invited to preach in Newcastle. He did so for a year from December 1588, becoming, as Charleton puts it, 'a shining light in Newcastle'. While in Newcastle, John Udall preached to acclaim in St Giles' Cathedral Edinburgh before King James VI.

Udall was summoned to London in December 1589 in connection with the celebrated Martin Marprelate tracts against the bishops. These are the best prose satires of the Elizabethan age and more than a match for the professional writers who attacked them. How much Udall helped his friend John Penry in this affair remains obscure; Penry had passed through Newcastle some three months previously, but had merely saluted Udall at his door, according to the latter. At all events, Penry was executed and Udall arrested for the earlier writings now acknowledged. Condemned to death, he refused to recant; pardoned in June 1592, he died soon after. His Hebrew grammar and dictionary, entitled The Key to the Holy Tongue was published in 1593.

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