HEYWOOD, JOHN. - Musician and dramatist, who lived between 1497 and 1578. Born perhaps at Stock, near Chelmsford, died at Louvain. He studied at Oxford; from 1519 to 1528 he was first a singer, then “chapel master” and organizer of festivities and performances at the court of Henry VIII. After 1528 he lived by teaching music and writing short dramatic works for the court or for the nobility.
He belonged to the circle of sir Thomas More (whose niece he had married), sharing its ideas; and upon the introduction of the Reformation in England he had to endure imprisonment and other persecutions. He later enjoyed the favor of Queen Mary, but in 1564, with the triumph of the Protestant reaction, he left his homeland forever to accept the hospitality of the Jesuits of Malines. His son Jasper, who later became a Jesuit, was one of the translators of Seneca; his daughter was the mother of the poet John Donne. H. was a master of the interludes, brief one-act farces or dialogues of a realistic character, intended for aristocratic circles, the best known of which is The Four P's (ca. 1544).