John Yonge

Who was John Yonge?

John Yonge, English ecclesiastic and diplomatist, was born at Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire, and educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he became a fellow in 1485. Probably the son of John Yonge, Lord Mayor of London. He was ordained in 1500 and held several livings before receiving his first diplomatic mission to arrange a commercial treaty with the archduke of Austria in 1504, and in the Low Countries in 1506 in connection with the projected marriage between Henry VII and Margaret of Savoy.

In 1507 he was made Master of the Rolls, and in the following year was employed in various diplomatic missions. He was one of the ambassadors who arranged the Holy League in 1513, and accompanied Henry VIII during the ensuing campaign.

In 1514 he was made dean of York in succession to Wolsey, and in 1515 he was one of the commissioners for renewing the peace with Francis I. That year, also, he became archdeacon of Barnstaple.

Yonge died in London on 25 April 1516. Yonge was on terms of intimate friendship with Dean Colet, and was a correspondent of Erasmus. A statue of him stands in the former Rolls Chapel in The Maughan Library, King's College London.