Both James and John Yonge (possibly an uncle)[1] occur in the Irish patent and close rolls early in the fifteenth century.
A John Yonge was serjeant of the county of Limerick in the reign of Richard II, held a lease of various lands, and was convicted of unspecified felonies.
In 1412, he wrote a Latin text known as the 'Memoriale' chronicling the visions of a Hungarian knight, Laurence Rathold of Pászthó, in Saint Patrick's Purgatory.
He was hired by James Butler, 4th earl of Ormonde, to translate into English the ‘Secreta Secretorum’ attributed to Aristotle.
Yonge's translation appears to have been made from a French version by one Gofroi of Waterford; it was dedicated to Ormonde and was once considered ‘perhaps the only lengthy work known written in the English of the Pale early in the fifteenth century’.