Ralph Baines

Baines was born around 1504 at Knowsthorpe in Yorkshire. Educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, he was ordained priest at Ely in 1519.{{acad|id=BNS517R|name=Baynes, Ralph}} He came out against Hugh Latimer, and opposed Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, being incited to the latter by John Fisher.Richard Rex, The Theology of John Fisher (1991), p. 176.

He was rector of Hardwick, Cambridgeshire, until 1544;[http://www.hardwick-cambs.org.uk/history/read/from_beginnings_to_the_19th_century History – Hardwick village] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080829154915/http://www.hardwick-cambs.org.uk/history/read/from_beginnings_to_the_19th_century |date=29 August 2008 }} but he had left the country by 1538.Peter Marshall, Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England (2006), p. 232.

Baines was a Hebraist, being a college lecturer in Hebrew at St John's. He went to Paris and became professor of Hebrew at the Collège de France from 1549 to 1554.[http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/278.htm The Circulation of Knowledge in Humanist Europe – CNRS Web site – CNRS]

He was the author of the work Compendium Michlol (also with the Hebrew title, Ḳiẓẓur ha-Ḥeleḳ Rishon ha-Miklol), containing a Latin abstract of the first part of David Ḳimḥi's Hebrew grammar, and dealing methodically with the letters, reading, nouns, regular and irregular verbs, prefixes and suffixes (Paris, 1554).

In 1554, Baines returned to England and was consecrated as Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, on 18 November 1554.

He vigorously opposed the Protestant Reformers, and features largely in Foxe's Book of Martyrs,[http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/apparatus/person_glossaryB.html John Foxe's Book of Martyrs] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110516170031/https://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/apparatus/person_glossaryB.html}}, under Ralph Bayne. conducting many examinations with his Chancellor, Anthony Draycot.[http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/apparatus/person_glossaryD.html John Foxe's Book of Martyrs] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110516180309/http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/apparatus/person_glossaryD.html |date=16 May 2011 }} His chancellor was involved, for instance, in the burning of a young blind woman, Joan Waste, for heresy in Derby.[http://www.headlinehistory.co.uk/online/East%20Midlands/Tudor/Religion/story754.htm Blind Joan (22) Is Executed] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080820094135/http://www.headlinehistory.co.uk/online/East%20Midlands/Tudor/Religion/story754.htm |date=20 August 2008 }}, HeadlineHistory.co.uk, accessed February 2009 He was one of the eight defenders of Catholic doctrine at the Westminster Conference of 1558/9.

On the accession of Elizabeth I of England, he was deprived of his bishopric (21 June 1559)[http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=34733 Bishops | British History Online] and committed to the care of Edmund Grindal, the Protestant Bishop of London, becoming one of eleven imprisoned bishops (researches of G. Philips support a theory that, though nominally a guest, Baines was in fact a strict prisoner). His captivity lasted until 18 November 1559, when, in the words of fellow Roman Catholic John Pitts, Baines "died an illustrious Confessor of the Lord".

• Prima Rudimenta in linguam Hebraicam (Paris, 1550)
• Compendium Michol, hoc est absolutissimæ grammatices Davidis Chimhi (Paris, 1554)
• In Proverbia Salomonis (Paris, 1555).

• Nicholas Sanders, Report to Cardinal Moroni, 1561 (Cath. Record Soc. Pubs., 1905), I
• John Pitts, De Angliae Scriptoribus (1623)
• Charles Dodd, Church History (1688), Pt. III, ii, art. 3
• Charles Henry Cooper, Athenæ Cantabrigienses, 1,202
• Joseph Gillow, Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath. (London, 1885)
• Thomas Edward Bridgett and Thomas Francis Knox, Q. Eliz. and the Cath. Hierarchy (London, 1889)
• G. E. Phillips, Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy (London, 1905)
• Johann Christoph Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebrœa, i. 308.

{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

• [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02208a.htm Ralph Baines], article in the Catholic Encyclopedia
• [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=444&letter=B Source, Jewish Encyclopedia]

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{{s-bef| before=Richard Sampson}}

{{s-ttl| title=Bishop of Lichfield | years=1554–1559}}

{{s-aft| after=Thomas Bentham}}

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{{Bishops of Coventry and Lichfield}}

{{JewishEncyclopedia|title=Baynus (Bayne), Rudolphus}}

{{Catholic|title=Ralph Baines}}

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Category:Bishops of Lichfield

Category:16th-century English Roman Catholic bishops

Category:Christian Hebraists

Category:1504 births

Category:1559 deaths

Category:Academic staff of the Collège de France

Category:Clergy from Leeds

Category:Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge