He seems to have been born near Leeds (surnames were generally taken from the village of birth, so it is likely he was born in the village of Methley, seven miles south-west of Leeds on the road to Pontefract in Yorkshire), but proof is lacking and his dialect casts doubt on this identification.
[2] He wrote primarily for his fellow Carthusians, and so his writings are in Latin except for a short Middle English letter.
[4] Methley produced a Latin glossed translation of The Cloud of Unknowing in 1491 for his fellow Carthusian Thurstan Watson.
He also then began a Latin glossed translation of the Middle English version of The Mirror of Simple Souls, though he was unaware that the work had been written by the executed heretic Marguerite Porete.
He died, almost certainly at Mount Grace, at some point in the year before 3 May 1528, when his name was entered among the deaths recorded at the Carthusian general chapter.