Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Alvey, Richard
ALVEY, RICHARD (d. 1584), master of the Temple, received his education at Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1529–30, and M.A. in 1533. He was admitted a fellow of St. John's College in 1537 or 1538 during the prefecture of Dr. George Day. On 24 Feb. 1539–40 he was presented by his college to the rectory of Thorington in Essex. He proceeded B.D. in 1543, was admitted to the rectory of Grinstead, near Colchester, on the king's presentation, 11 May 1546, and to the rectory of Sandon, also in Essex, on the presentation of Sir John Gate, 13 Nov. 1548. On 11 Dec. 1552 he was installed canon of Westminster.
Early in the reign of Queen Mary he was deprived of all his preferments, whereupon he went into exile, residing at Frankfort till after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, when he returned to England and was restored to the rectory of Thorington. By letters-patent dated 13 Feb. 1559–60 he was appointed master of the Temple, and he was again constituted one of the canons of the church of Westminster by the charter of refoundation, 21 June 1560. In 1565 he resigned the rectory of Thorington. Dr. Sandys, Bishop of London, collated him to the rectory of Bursted Parva, Essex, on 10 April 1571. He resigned his canonry at Westminster in 1575, and the rectory of Bursted Parva in the following year. His death occurred about August 1584.
Isaak Walton (Life of Hooker, 1665, p. 45) describes him as ‘a man of a strict life, of great learning, and of so venerable behaviour as to gain such a degree of love and reverence from all men that he was generally known as Father Alvie.’ Moreover, he informs us that at the reading in the Temple following his death, Dr. Sandys, Archbishop of York, being at dinner with the judges, the reader and the benchers of the society ‘met with a condolement for the death of Father Alvie, an high commendation of his saint-like life and of his great merit both to God and man: and as they bewailed his death, so they wished for a like pattern of virtue and learning to succeed him.’ His successor was the famous and ‘judicious’ Richard Hooker.
[Baker's Hist. of St. John's Coll. Camb., ed. Mayor; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Anglic., ed. Hardy, iii. 352, 353; MS. Kennett, xlviii. 77; MS. Lansd. 27 art. 4, 107 art. 2; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. i. 491.]