William Latymer was the author of an important early biography of Anne Boleyn, whom he served as chaplain. The treatise, addressed to Elizabeth I, is an eyewitness account of Anne; and though due allowance must be made for Latymer's loyal and Protestant bias, it goes far to confirm Anne's role in the Reformation and also shows the hopes placed in her royal daughter by Protestant Reformers.

Latymer (who is not to be confused with the classical scholar and friend of Desiderius Erasmus) was born in 1498 into a gentry family of Freston in Suffolk. A member of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, which was the college of Matthew Parker, another of Anne's chaplains, he was graduated M.A. in 1536. In that year he was already in Anne's service: Archbishop Thomas Cranmer entrusted him and Hugh Latimer (not a relation) with the examination of a book presented to Anne. This was Tristram...