John Bale, most of all a controversialist of the first water, hence the nickname “Bilious Bale,” but also variously a Carmelite friar, an Anglican bishop, literary antiquarian, poet, and playwright, was born on this day in 1495. While his penchant for bile, scandalous parody, and outright denunciation spewed on the page threatens to overtake most everything else about him, the good bishop also wrote two editions of a catalog of the writers of Great Britain that are essential to the... Read more