Allen, John

ALLEN, JOHN: 1. Archbishop of Dublin; b. 1476; murdered at Artaine, near Dublin, July 27, 1534, during the rebellion of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald. He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge; was sent to Rome on ecclesiastical business by Archbishop Warham, and spent several years there; held various benefices in England, and became an adherent of Cardinal Wolsey and his agent in the spoliation of religious houses; was nominated archbishop of Dublin Aug., 1528 (consecrated Mar., 1529), and a month later was made chancellor of Ireland. He was involved in Wolsey’s fall, impoverished by it, and lost the chancellorship. He was a learned canonist, and wrote an Epistola de pallii significatione, when he received the pallium, and a treatise De consuetudinibus ac statutis in tutoriis causis observandis. He compiled two registers, the Liber niger and the Repertorium viride, which give valuable information regarding his diocese and the state of the churches.

Bibliography: G. T. Stokes, Calendar of the “Liber niger Alani,” in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, ser. 5, iii. (1893) 303-320.

2. Dissenting layman; b. at Truro, Cornwall, 1771; d. June 17, 1839, at Hackney, where for thirty years he kept a private school. His chief work was Modern Judaism: or a Brief Account of the Opinions, Traditions, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Jews in Modern Times (London, 1816); he published also (1813) what was long the standard English translation of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.