He is known as the English translator of three Latin plays of Seneca, the Troas (1559), the Thyestes (1560) and Hercules Furens (1561).
He was son of John Heywood, and became a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, but was compelled to resign in 1558.
In the same year he was elected a fellow of All Souls College, but, refusing to conform to the changes in religion at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I, he gave up his fellowship and went to Rome, where he was received into the Society of Jesus.
[1] For seventeen years he was professor of moral theology and controversy in the Jesuit College at Dillingen, in present-day Bavaria.
He was arrested on the charge of being a priest, but, although efforts were made to induce him to abjure his opinions, he remained firm.