John Bekinsau
John Bekinsau was an English classical scholar and theologian.
Life
He was born at Broadchalke, in Wiltshire, about 1496; his father was John Bekinsau, of Hartley Wespell, Hampshire. Bekinsau was educated at Winchester School, and proceeded to New College, Oxford; he was made Fellow of his college in 1520, and took the degree of M.A. in 1526. At Oxford he was, according to Anthony Wood, esteemed ‘an admirable Grecian;’ and on proceeding to Paris he read the Greek lecture in the university, probably soon after 1530, the year in which Francis I of France founded the royal professorships and revived the study of Greek at Paris. Having returned to England, Bekinsau married, and so vacated his fellowship, in 1538.He was a friend of John Leland, who addresses a poem to a forthcoming work of Bekinsau, and refers to the learning and Parisian studies of its author. John Bale gives a hostile account of Bekinsau, alleging that his work on the supremacy was only written for money, and adding that he returned to the Roman church in 1554, ‘like a dog to his vomit.’ In Mary's reign he was a Member of Parliament for Downton and Hindon. On the accession of Elizabeth, Bekinsau retired to Sherburne, a village in Hampshire, where he died, and was buried on 20 December 1559.