# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Joliffe, Henry

​JOLIFFE, HENRY (d. 1573), dean of Bristol, was educated at the university of Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1523–4, and M.A. in 1527. He appears to have been a member successively of Clare Hall and of Michaelhouse (Cooper, Athenæ Cantabr. i. 320). He served the office of proctor of the university in 1536–7, and subsequently proceeded to the degree of B.D. ​He became rector of Bishops Hampton, Warwickshire, in 1538, and was appointed one of the canons of the cathedral church of Worcester by the charter of refoundation 24 Jan. 1541–2. In 1552 he and Robert Johnson (d. 1559) [q. v.], another canon of Worcester, refused to subscribe the articles of religion propounded by Bishop Hooper at his diocesan visitation, on the ground that they were neither catholic nor agreeable to the ancient doctrine. The two canons held a public disputation with Hooper and Harley, afterwards bishop of Hereford, and Hooper sent an account of the controversy to the privy council (Strype, Eccl. Memorials, ii. 534, folio; Life of Cranmer, pp. 218, 219, Appendix, p. 136, folio). In the dedication of the ‘Responsio’ to the king of Spain, Joliffe states that he had many disputes with Hooper concerning baptism and original sin, and at length was persecuted and imprisoned by him. On 9 Sept. 1554 Joliffe was installed dean of Bristol. He was present at the sitting of the commissioners on 24 Jan. 1554–5 when sentence of excommunication and judgment ecclesiastical was pronounced against Hooper and Rogers; and he attended Archbishop Cranmer's second trial at Oxford in September 1555 (Life of Cranmer, ii. 1072, 8vo).
On the accession of Elizabeth he was deprived of all his ecclesiastical preferments. He escaped to the continent, and settled at Louvain for the rest of his life. In 1560 a paper was drawn up for the purpose of supplying the holy see with information which might be of service in the event of the pope filling the vacant sees in England; and in this document Joliffe was named as worthy of the see of Gloucester, vacant by the death of Dr. King on 4 Dec. 1557 (Brady, Episcopal Succession, ii. 324). After the death of Richard Pate, formerly bishop of Worcester, which occurred at Louvain 5 Oct. 1565, two of the canons or prebendaries of Worcester, ‘Dominus Joliffus et collega,’ claimed some of the property (ib. p. 289). Joliffe died abroad shortly before 28 Jan. 1573–4, when letters of administration of his effects were granted by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury to William Seres, the London publisher.
Joliffe's works are: 1. ‘Contra Ridlæum hæreticum,’ lib. i. 2. ‘Responsio venerabilium sacerdotum H. Joliffi et R. Johnsoni,’ Antwerp, 1564, 8vo, conjointly with Robert Johnson. 3. ‘Epistola Pio V Pontifici Maximo.’ Prefixed to Cardinal Pole's treatise ‘De Summi Pontificis Officio,’ Louvain, 1569, 8vo.
[Addit. MS. 5873, f. 36; Chambers's Worcestershire Biography, p. 68; Cranmer's Works (Cox), ii. 543; Dodd's Church Hist. i. 522; Foxe's Acts and Monuments, 1849, viii. 554; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), i. 223, iii. 82, 617; Maitland's Essays on the Reformation, p. 444; Pits, De Angliæ Scriptoribus, p. 863; Sanders's Rise and Progress of the Anglican Schism (Lewis), p. 198; Strype's Annals, ii. Appendix, p. 102, folio; Strype's Eccl. Memorials, iii. 180, folio; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 443; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 133.]
T. C.