John Feckenham - Under Henry VIII and Edward VI

Under Henry VIII and Edward VI

Feckenham was born at Feckenham, Worcestershire, into a family of substantial yeomen. The family name was Howman, but as a monk he chose to be known by the name of his place of origin. Thomas Fuller notes in Worthies of England that Feckenham was the last clergyman to be "locally surnamed". His early education came from the parish priest, but he was sent at an early age to the cloister school at Evesham Abbey, and from there, at age eighteen, to Gloucester Hall, Oxford, as a Benedictine student. After taking his degree in arts, he returned to Evesham Abbey, and pursued a monastic profession. In 1537 he went back to Oxford and took his degree of Bachelor of Divinity on 11 June 1539. He was at Evesham at the time the abbey was surrendered on 27 January 1540 in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Then, with a pension of £10 a year, he went back to Oxford. Soon afterwards he became chaplain to John Bell Bishop of Worcester and then served Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, in the same capacity from 1543 to 1549. In 1544 Bonner gave him the position of rector of Solihull.

Feckenham established a reputation as a preacher and a disputant of keen intellect but unvarying charity. After Bonner was deprived of his see, in about 1549, Thomas Cranmer sent Feckenham to the Tower of London, and while there learning and eloquence made him such a successful advocate that he was temporarily freed ("borrowed out of prison") to take part in seven public disputations against John Hooper, John Jewel and others.