Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/408

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202). ‘Wood did little more than put together materials accumulated by Twyne … there is hardly a single reference in these treatises [the ‘History and Antiquities’ and ‘Annals’], which did not come, in the first instance, from Twyne,’ though there is ‘an entire absence of acknowledgment of debt to Twyne's collections’ (ib. iv. 223–4). These collections comprise some sixty manuscript volumes; they were bequeathed by Twyne's will (printed ib. iv. 202) to the university archives and Corpus Christi College. Twenty-six volumes are now in the lower room of the university archives, six are in the upper room, thirteen volumes are in Corpus Christi library, and thirteen more, only in part by Twyne, are among Wood MSS. D, E, and F. At least three were lost or destroyed by fire (for full description of the volumes see ib. iv. 203–22). No systematic attempt has been made to print these collections, but most of the volumes published by the Oxford Historical Society contain extracts from Twyne's manuscripts (cf. e.g. Oxford City Documents, ed. Thorold Rogers, p. 140 et passim).

[Authorities cited; Hist. MSS. Comm. 13th Rep. App. pt. iv.; Sussex Archæol. Coll. xiii. 60, 274; Horsfield's Lewes, i. 220–1, Sussex, i. 214, 501; Woodward's Hampshire, vol. iii.; Strype's Works; Laud's Works, iv. 324, v. 84, 124, 149, 582; Wood's Athenæ, iii. 108; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Oxford Hist. Society's Publications, especially Fowler's Hist. of Corpus, Reg. Univ. Oxon., Clark's Life and Times of Wood, Madan's Early Oxford Press, Burrows's Collectanea, and Parker's Early Hist. of Oxford.]

TWYNE, JOHN (1501?–1581), schoolmaster and author, born about 1501 at Bullingdon, Hampshire, was son of William Twyne, and was descended from Sir Brian Twyne of Long Parish in the same county. He was educated, according to Wood, at New Inn, Oxford, but he seems to have frequented Corpus Christi College; he says he saw there Richard Foxe [q. v.], bishop of Winchester, ‘old and blind;’ John Lewis Vives [q. v.], and others (De Rebus Albionicis, p. 2). He graduated B.C.L. on 31 Jan. 1524–5, and then married and became master of the free grammar school at Canterbury. His first literary work was an introductory epistle to an anonymous translation of Hugh of Caumpeden's ‘History of Kyng Boccus and Sydracke.’ Ames gives the date as 1510, which is doubtfully adopted in the British Museum catalogue; but no surviving copy has any date, and it is almost certain that it was published about 1530. The only dated book issued by Thomas Godfray, the publisher, was Thynne's edition of Chaucer, 1532, and ‘Boccus’ was printed at the expense of Robert Saltwood, who was a monk of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, at the dissolution in 1539.

Twyne's school was, according to Wood, ‘much frequented by the youth of the neighbourhood,’ and he consequently grew rich. In April 1539 he bought two messuages and two gardens in the parish of St. Paul's, Canterbury (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. xiv. pt. i. No. 906), and on 9 Dec. 1541 the chapter of the cathedral leased to him the rectory of St. Paul's (Lansd. MS. 982, f. 9). In 1534 William Winchilsea, a monk of St. Augustine's, accused Cranmer of sending ‘Twyne the schoolmaster to ride twice in one week to Sandwich to read a lecture of heresy’ (Letters and Papers, vii. 1608). Twyne also purchased lands at Preston and Hardacre, Kent, and, having become prosperous, took an active part in the municipal affairs of Canterbury. In 1544–5 he served as sheriff of Canterbury (Lists of Sheriffs, 1898, p. 171). He was an alderman in 1553, and in January of that year represented the city in parliament (Hasted, Kent, iv. 406). He gave offence to Northumberland, and on 18 May the mayor of Canterbury was directed to send him up to London (Acts P. C. iv. 273). Twyne was re-elected for Canterbury on 7 Sept. following, and on 22 March 1553–4; he was mayor of the city in 1554, and actively opposed the insurgents during Wyatt's rebellion (Archæol. Cant. xi. 143). In 1560, during an ecclesiastical visitation of Canterbury, ‘Mr. Twyne, schoolmaster, was ordered to abstain from ryot and drunkeness, and not to intermeddle with any public office in the town’ (Tanner, p. 728); and in 1562 he was again in trouble with the privy council (Acts P.C. vii. 105). The cause may have been his ‘addiction to the popish religion,’ and Tanner says that he maligned Henry VIII, Matthew Parker, and John Foxe ‘non minus acerbe quam injuste.’ Twyne afterwards complained that he had been injured by Parker's accusations, and had through him been ejected from the keepership of the forest of Rivingwood in Littlebourn, near Canterbury, and deprived of his salary; on 29 Jan. 1575–6, after Parker's death, Twyne sought restitution from Burghley (Lansd. MS. 21, f. 111). Possibly he is the John Twyne admitted to Gray's Inn in 1566 (Foster, Reg. p. 33).

Twyne died at Canterbury on 24 Nov. 1581, and was buried on the 30th in St. Paul's Church, where a brass plate with an inscription commemorated him (Hasted, iv.