Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Makkarell, Matthew
MAKKARELL or MACKARELL, MATTHEW (d. 1537), abbot of Barlings, Lincolnshire, was educated at Cambridge, and afterwards at Paris, where he was created D.D. He was incorporated in the name degree at Cambridge in 1516. He entered the order of Gilbertines or Premonstratensians, was made abbot of the house of the order at Alnwick, and preached the funeral sermon on Thomas Howard, second duke of Norfolk [q. v.], in 1524. He afterwards became abbot of Barlings, or Oxeney, in Lincolnshire, one of the greater abbeys, having a revenue of more than two hundred pounds a year (cf. Gairdner, Letters and Papers Henry VIII, ix. 1090). There is no evidence that he acknowledged the royal supremacy, but the authorities cannot have thought him over-conservative, or he would not have been appointed suffragan bishop of Lincoln (to John Longland [q. v.]) in 1535, with the title of Bishop of Chalcedon. In the Lincolnshire rebellion of 1536 he took a leading part. According to his own account (ib. xi. 805, xii. passim), he was compelled by the leaders to give the rebels food. But the story of his appearance in full armour is probably an error (cf. Froude, Hist. of Engl. iii. 105; Gasquet, Henry VIII and the Engl. Monasteries, ii. 75). The abbot probably approved of the rebels' demands for the restoration of the dissolved monasteries. All was over by 13 Oct., and the abbot was taken prisoner, examined in Lincoln and afterwards in London, and executed at Tyburn 27 March 1536–7. He seems to have given away property belonging to his abbey, some of which Sir William Parre ‘bulted forth’ from the ‘five or six simple men’ who held it.
Makkarell is said to have published:
- ‘Sermones in Evangelia Dominicalia per Odonem Cancellarium Parisiensem,’ Paris, 1520, 4to.
- ‘Sermones Dominicales.’ But neither of these works is in the British Museum.
[Authorities quoted; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 61, 531; Dugdale's Monasticon, vi. 915; App. ii. 3rd Rep. Dep.-Keeper of Public Records; State Papers Henry VIII, i. 463 sqq.; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.]