page_title: John Cheke
section_title: Status and compromise
hierarchical_section_title: John Cheke / Edwardian statesman / Status and compromise
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait Miniature of Thomas Seymour
context_page_description: Sir John Cheke was an English classical scholar and statesman. One of the foremost teachers of his age, and the first Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, he played a great part in the revival of Greek learning in England. He was tutor to Prince Edward, the future King Edward VI, and also sometimes to Princess Elizabeth. Of strongly Reformist sympathy in religious affairs, his public career as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, Member of Parliament and briefly as Secretary of State during King Edward's reign was brought to a close by the accession of Queen Mary in 1553. He went into voluntary exile abroad, at first under royal licence. He was captured and imprisoned in 1556, and under threat or apprehension of execution by the fire made a forced public recantation and affiliated himself to the Church of Rome. He died not long afterwards, filled with remorse for having forsworn his true belief from the infirmity of fear. His character, teaching and reputation were, however, admiringly and honourably upheld.
context_section_description: Upon the accession of Edward to the throne Cheke, now Schoolmaster to the King, was made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, being allowed an annuity of £100 from the Augmentations in August. On 1 October he was returned to Parliament as a member for Bletchingley, Sussex, probably under the patronage of Sir Thomas Cawarden.
  He was very soon placed in a compromise by Thomas Seymour (brother of the Duke of Somerset), who had drafted a letter as from the King to the Lords of the Parliament House seeking their approval to separate the offices of Lord Protector and Lord Regent, and to appoint Thomas Seymour himself as Protector. He urged Cheke to pass the letter to the King and to induce him to sign it, which Cheke refused to do, stating that Lord Paget had prohibited any such dealings. At Christmas, Seymour followed this up with a gift of £40 to Cheke, half for himself and half for the King. Seymour approached the King himself without success: Edward took Cheke's advice, and refused to sign it.
  On 1 April 1548 Cheke was chosen by special mandate of the King, overriding university statutes, to replace his former tutor George Day as Provost of King's College. He received by purchase a large grant of lands in London and elsewhere, including the site of the former College of St John the Baptist at Stoke-by-Clare in Suffolk, in October 1548. Matthew Parker, its dean, had established a school there, and after its superstitious constitution had been dissolved he advised Cheke on its condition and maintenance.
  The Seymour affair came to a head in January 1548/9, when Thomas Seymour was formally charged with using improper means to influence King Edward, and Cheke became implicated as his likely accomplice. On 11 January Cheke came near to losing his office as schoolmaster to the King. Seymour confessed the gift, but on 20 February Cheke exonerated himself by an honest declaration of his dealings in the matter. Unfortunately Mistress Cheke offended the Duchess of Somerset in the course of these proceedings, and an apology had to be made. Following Seymour's execution in March Cheke retreated to Cambridge for a time, tending his library and readjusting his circumstances, aware that he had come near to losing his position (as his letter to Peter Osborne indicates). Other royal preceptors, Sir Anthony Cooke or Dr. Cox, maintained the young King's instruction. In the Epistle to his Arte of Logique (published 1551), Thomas Wilson speaks of Cheke and Cooke as "your Maiesties teachers and Scholemaisters in all good litterature".
  The antiquary Francis Blomefield dates to 1550 Cheke's receipt of a 21-year lease of the manor and rectory of Rushworth, Norfolk (a former collegiate estate established by the Gonville family), which he re-leased to his brother-in-law George Alyngton of Stoke-by-Clare.
caption: Thomas Seymour
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