BALDWIN, ROBERT (1804-1858), Canadian statesman, was born at York (now Toronto) on the 12th of May 1804. His father, William Warren Baldwin (d. 1844), went to Canada from Ireland in 1798; though a man of wealth and good family and a devoted member of the Church of England, he opposed the religious and political oligarchy which was then at the head of Canadian affairs, and brought up his son in the same principles. Robert Baldwin was called to the Bar in 1825, and entered into partnership with his father. In 1829 he was elected a member of the parliament of Upper Canada for the town of York, but was defeated in the following year and retired for a time into private life. During the next six years, he so constantly advocated a responsible executive as the one cure for the political and economic evils of the time that he was known as "the man of one idea." In 1836 he was called by Sir Francis Bond Head (1793-1875), the lieutenant-governor, to the executive council, but finding himself without influence, and compelled to countenance measures to which he was opposed, he resigned within a month. Though a reformer, he strongly disapproved of the rebellion of 1837-1838. On the union of the two Canadas he became (1841) a member of the executive council under Lord Sydenham, but soon resigned on the question of responsible government. In 1842 he formed the first Liberal administration, in connexion with Mr (afterwards Sir) L. H. Lafontaine, but resigned the next year, after a quarrel with the governor-general, Sir Charles Metcalfe, on a question of patronage, in which he felt that of responsible government to be involved. At the general election which followed, the governor-general was sustained by a narrow majority, but in 1848 the Liberals were again returned to power, and he and Mr Lafontaine formed their second administration under Lord Elgin and carried numerous important reforms, including the freeing from sectarian control of the Provincial University and the introduction into Upper Canada of an important municipal system.
Internal dissensions soon began to appear in the Liberal party, and in 1851 Mr Baldwin resigned. The special struggle leading to his resignation was an attempt to abolish the court of chancery of Upper Canada, whose constitution was due to a measure introduced by Baldwin in 1849. The attempt, though defeated, had been supported by a majority of the representatives from Upper Canada, and Baldwin's fastidious conscience took it as a vote of want of confidence. A deeper reason was his inability to approve of the advanced views of the Radicals, or "Clear Grits," as they came to be called. On seeking re-election in York, he declined to give any pledge on the burning question of the Clergy Reserves and was defeated. In 1858 the Liberal-Conservative party, formed in 1854 by a coalition, attempted to bring him out as a candidate for the upper house, which was at this date elective, but though he had broken with the advanced reformers, he could not approve of the tactics of their opponents, and refused to stand. He died on the 9th of December 1858. Even those who most bitterly attacked his measures admitted the purity and unselfishness of his motives. After the concession of responsible government, he devoted himself to bringing about
a good understanding between the English and French-speaking inhabitants of Canada, and his memory is held as dear among the French Canadians as in his native province of Ontario.
See J. C. Dent, Canadian Portrait Gallery (1880). His life, by the Hon. Geo. W. Ross, is included in The Makers of Canada series (Toronto).
BALE, JOHN (1495-1563), bishop of Ossory, English author, was born at Cove, near Dunwich in Suffolk, on the 21st of November 1495. At the age of twelve he entered the Carmelite monastery at Norwich, removing later to the house of "Holme," probably the abbey of the Whitefriars at Hulne near Alnwick. Later he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, and took his degree of B.D. in 1529. At Cambridge he came under the influence of Cranmer and of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Baron Wentworth, and became an ardent partisan of the Reformers. He laid aside his monastic habit, and, as he himself puts it with characteristically brutal violence, "that I might never more serve so execrable a beast, I took to wife the faithful Dorothy." He obtained the living of Thornden, Suffolk, but in 1534 was summoned before the archbishop of York for a sermon against the invocation of saints preached at Doncaster, and afterwards before Stokesley, bishop of London, but he escaped through the powerful protection of Thomas Cromwell, whose notice he is said to have attracted by his miracle plays. He was an unscrupulous controversialist, and in these plays he allows no considerations of decency to stand in the way of his denunciations of the monastic system and its supporters. The prayer of Infidelitas which opens the second act of his Thre Laws (quoted by T. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, sect. 41) is an example of the lengths to which he went in profane parody. These coarse and violent productions were well calculated to impress popular feeling, and no doubt Cromwell found in him an invaluable instrument. But on his patron's fall in 1540 Bale fled with his wife and children to Germany. He returned on the accession of Edward VI. He received the living of Bishopstoke, Hampshire, being promoted in 1552 to the Irish see of Ossory. He refused to be consecrated by the Roman rite, which still obtained in the Irish church, and won his point, though the dean of Dublin entered a protest against the revised office during the ceremony (see his Vocacyon of John Bale to the Bishopperycke of Ossorie, Harl. Misc. vol. vi.). He pushed his Protestant propaganda in Ireland with no regard to expediency, and when the accession of Mary inaugurated a reaction in matters of religion, it was with difficulty that he was got safely out of the country. He tried to escape to Scotland, but on the voyage was captured by a Dutch man-of-war, which was driven by stress of weather to St. Ives in Cornwall. Bale was arrested on suspicion of treason, but soon released. At Dover he had another narrow escape, but he eventually made his way to Holland and thence to Frankfort and Basel. During his exile he devoted himself to writing. After his return, on the accession of Elizabeth, he received (1560) a prebendal stall at Canterbury. He died in November 1563 and was buried in the cathedral.
The scurrility and vehemence with which "foul-mouthed Bale," as Wood calls him, attacked his enemies does not destroy the value of his contributions to literature, though his strong bias against Roman Catholic writers does detract from the critical value of his works. Of his mysteries and miracle plays only five have been preserved, but the titles of the others, quoted by himself in his Catalogus, show that they were animated by the same political and religious aims. The Thre Laws of Nature, Moses and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharisees and Papystes most wicked (pr. 1538 and again in 1562) was a morality play. The direction for the dressing of the parts is instructive: "Let Idolatry be decked like an old witch, Sodomy like a monk of all sects, Ambition like a bishop, Covetousness like a Pharisee or spiritual lawyer, False Doctrine like a popish doctor, and Hypocrisy like a gray friar." A Tragedye; or enterlude manyfesting the chief promyses of God unto Man ... (1538, printed in Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. 1), The Temptacyon of our Lorde (ed. A. B. Grosart in Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library, vol. i., 1870), and A brefe Comedy or Enterlude of Johan Baptystes preachynge in the Wyldernesse, &c. (Harl. Misc. vol. i.) were all written in 1538. His plays are doggerel, but he is a figure of some dramatic importance as the author of Kynge Johan (c. 1548), which marks the transition between the old morality play and the English historical drama. It does not appear to have directly influenced the creators of the chronicle histories. To the authors of the Troublesome Raigne of King John (1591) it was apparently unknown, but it is noteworthy that an attempt, however feeble, at historical drama was made fourteen years before the production of Gorboduc. Kynge Johan (ed. J. P. Collier, Camden Soc. 1838) is itself a polemic against the Roman Catholic Church. King John is represented as the champion of English rites against the Roman see:—
"This noble Kynge Johan, as a faythfull Moses
Withstode proude Pharao for his poore Israel."
But the English people remained in the bondage of Rome,—
"Tyll that duke Josue, whych was our late Kynge Henrye,