Alexander Nowell

[2] His sister Beatrice was the mother of John Hammond;[3] Another brother, Robert Nowell, became Attorney of the Court of Wards.

[4] Nowell was educated at Middleton, near Rochdale, Lancashire and at Brasenose College, Oxford[5] where he is said to have shared rooms with John Foxe the martyrologist.

During this period he became involved in a controversy with Thomas Dorman, over the views of the late John Redman, which ran on in different forms for many years.

On one occasion she rebuked Nowell in the vestry for having given her a prayer book with pictures of saints and angels that smacked of the Church of Rome.

On another, in March 1565, she interrupted his sermon, directed against a work A Treatyse of the Crosse (1564) of John Martiall, telling him to stick to his text and cease slighting the crucifix.

[12] With his brother Robert, a lawyer, he re-established the free school at Middleton; and made other benefactions for educational purposes at Brasenose College.

"[15] He was also a keen angler, and Izaak Walton says, "this good man was observed to spend a tenth part of his time in angling; and also (for I have conversed with those which have conversed with him) to bestow a tenth part of his revenue, and usually all his fish, amongst the poor that inhabited near to those rivers in which it was caught; saying often, 'that charity gave life to religion'".

It was officially required to be used in schools, in 1571, and Thomas Norton translated it into English, as A Catechism, or, First instruction of Christian religion (1570).