Sir John Cheke

born June 16, 1514, Cambridge, Eng.
died Sept. 13, 1557, London
English humanist and supporter of the
Protestant Reformation who, as the poet John
Milton said, “taught Cambridge and King Edward
Greek” and who, with his friend Sir Thomas
Smith, discovered the proper pronunciation of
ancient Greek. Through his teaching he made the
University of Cambridge the centre of the “new
learning” and the Reformed religion. Henry VIII
made him the first regius professor of Greek at
Cambridge. He was tutor to Prince Edward (1544),
who as King Edward VI knighted him in 1552.
On the accession of Mary I (1553), Cheke lost
the last of a series of government positions,
was imprisoned briefly, and fled abroad. There
he published his letters on Greek pronunciation.
In 1556 he was captured in Belgium and confined
to the Tower of London. Faced with death, he
recanted his Protestantism publicly and is said
to have died of shame.
One of the most erudite men of his time,
Cheke was an indefatigable translator. His
English works are of little importance, except
for their avoidance of foreign words and for his
reformed phonetic spelling, which make his
letters some of the best plain prose of the
period.