TERRY or TIRREYE, JOHN (1555?–1625), divine, born about 1555 at Long Sutton, Hampshire, entered Winchester school in 1572. He matriculated from New College, Oxford, 10 Jan. 1574–5, aged 19, was elected a fellow in 1576, and graduated B.A. 12 Nov. 1578, M.A. 15 June 1582. He resigned his fellowship on being presented by Bishop Cooper of Winchester to the living of Stockton, Wiltshire, in 1590. There he died, aged 70, on 10 May 1625, as recorded upon a monument in the church.
Terry's works show him to have held strong anti-Roman catholic opinions. They are: 1. ‘The Triall of Trvth,’ Oxford, 1600, 4to; the second part of this was issued in 1602; ‘Theologicall Logicke, or the third part of the Tryall of Trvth,’ appeared at Oxford, 1625, 4to. 2. ‘The Reasonableness of Wise and Holy Trvth, and the Absurdity of Foolish and Wicked Error,’ Oxford, 1617, small 4to; dedicated to Arthur Lake, bishop of Bath and Wells. 3. ‘A Defence of Protestancy’ (Wood).
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ii. 410; Kirby's Winchester Scholars, p. 144; Foster's Alumni Oxon. early ser.; Reg. Univ. Oxon. II. ii. 61, iii. 76; Wiltshire Archæol. Mag. xii. 115; Madan's Early Oxford Press, pp. 49, 54, 109, 128; Hoare's Hist. of Wilts (vol. i. Hundred of Heytesbury, p. 247).]
TESDALE, TEASDALE, or TISDALE, THOMAS (1547–1610), ‘co-founder of Pembroke College, Oxford,’ son of Thomas Tesdale (d. 1556), by his second wife, Joan (Knapp), was born at Stanford Dingley, Berkshire, and baptised on 13 Oct. 1547. He was brought up by his uncle, Richard Tesdale, a sadler of Abingdon, and was in 1563 the first scholar of John Royse's free school in that town. He made a large fortune as a maltster, became master of Abingdon Hospital in 1579, and was elected mayor, but declined to serve, in 1581, about which time he removed his residence to Glympton, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire. He died there on 13 June 1610, aged 63, and was buried in Glympton church, under a fine alabaster tomb (repaired in 1871), where was also laid his wife Maud (d. 1616). By his will, dated 31 May 1610 (in addition to other benefactions to Abingdon), he left 5,000l. to maintain seven fellows and six scholars from Abingdon free school at Balliol College, Oxford. The Society of Balliol, already hampered by their obligations to Tiverton school, seem to have tried hard to obtain a relaxation of the conditions attached to the bequest, but the negotiations were not completed in 1623 when Richard Wightwick, B.D., formerly of Balliol, offered to augment Tesdale's foundation. ‘It then fell under consideration,’ says Fuller, ‘that it was a pity so great a bounty (substantial enough to stand by itself) should be adjected to a former foundation.’
The feoffees under Tesdale's will, headed by Archbishop George Abbot [q. v.], acquiesced in the project of a new college; the king was approached through the chancellor, William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke [q. v.], and, James consenting, the existing foundation of Broadgates Hall ‘was erected by the name of Pembroke College’ (29 June 1624).
A portrait of Tesdale, dating from the middle of the seventeenth century, is preserved in Pembroke Hall, and was engraved for Wood's ‘Historia’ (1674).
[Little's Monument of Christian Munificence, ed. Cobham, 1871; Macleane's Hist. of Pembroke Coll. Oxford (Oxford Hist. Soc.); Blundell's Brief Mem. of Abingdon School; Fuller's Worthies, 1662, p. 341; Wood's Coll. and Halls, ed. Gutch, iii. 616; Henry Savage's Balliofergus, 1668, p. 87 (from which it is evident that the authorities at Balliol resented, as they well might, the diversion of the money from their ancient foundation).]
TESIMOND, alias Greenway, OSWALD (1563–1635), jesuit, also known as Philip Beaumont, born in Northumberland in 1563, entered the English College at Rome for his higher studies on 9 Sept. 1580, and joined the Society of Jesus on 13 April 1584 by leave of the cardinal protector Moroni. After teaching philosophy at Messina and Palermo, he was sent to the seminary at Madrid, which he left in November 1597, having been ordered to the English mission. He landed at Gravesend on 9 March 1597–1598, and assisted Father Edward Oldcorne for eight years in the Worcestershire and Warwickshire missions. In 1603 he was professed of the four vows.
Tesimond was one of the three jesuits who were charged with complicity in the ‘gunpowder plot,’ and a proclamation, containing a description of his personal appearance, was issued for his apprehension. It is certain that Tesimond knew of the secret in confession, but the government was unacquainted with this fact at the time of the proclamation. On 6 Nov. 1605 he rode to the conspirators at Huddington, and administered the sacrament to them. In explanation he afterwards stated that, having learned from a letter written by Sir Everard to Lady Digby the danger to which the conspirators were exposed, he deemed it his duty to offer
