Roger Tonge (priest)
English priest (died 1549)
Roger Tonge (died 1549) otherwise Roger Tong or Tongue was an English clergyman who served as a chaplain to King Edward VI and was later appointed dean of Winchester Cathedral in 1549.
Biography
Tonge was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge as a fellow on Mr. Ashton's foundation in 1534. He received his M.A. in 1537, B.D. in 1543, and D.D. in 1547. Almost nothing is known about his life until 1546, when he is noted as serving as a chaplain to the then Prince Edward. Above all else, Tonge was commended for his able and learned preaching. John Hooker noted that Tonge "had a very sweet voice and an eloquent tongue."
Tonge was a fervent Protestant at an early stage of the English Reformation. For many who had long held strong traditional or Catholic beliefs, the English Reformation was a violent stripping of their way of life. Archbishop Cranmer partly lead the charge of a more stringent form of Protestantism that removed much of the traditional elements of religious life, such as religious images or fasting during Lent. Tonge's sermons on the latter issue proved to be his most influential and controversial.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roger Tonge (priest)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.