He was born at Cove, near Dunwich in Suffolk. At the age of twelve he entered the Carmelite monastery at Norwich, removing later to the house of "Holme," probably the abbey of the Whitefriars at Hulne near Alnwick. Later he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, and took his degree of B. D. in 1529. At Cambridge he came under the influence of Thomas Cranmer and of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Baron Wentworth, and became an ardent Reformer. He abandoned his monastic vocation, and got married, saying, "that I might never more serve so execrable a beast, I took to wife the faithful Dorothy." He obtained the living of Thornden, Suffolk, but In 1534 was summoned before the Archbishop of York for a sermon against the invocation of saints preached at Doncaster, and afterwards before Stokesley, Bishop of London, but he escaped through the powerful protection of Thomas Cromwell, whose notice he is said to have attracted by his miracle plays.
In these plays, Bale allows no considerations of decency to stand in the way of his denunciations of the monastic system and its supporters. The prayer of Infidelitas which opens the second act of his Three Laws is an example of the lengths to which he went in profane parody. These coarse and violent productions were calculated to impress popular feeling, and Cromwell found in him an invaluable instrument. When Cromwell fell from favour in 1540, Bale fled with his wife and children to Germany. He returned on the accession of King Edward VI, and received the living of Bishopstoke, Hampshire, being promoted in 1552 to the Irish see of Ossory. He refused to be consecrated by the Roman Catholic rites of the Irish church, and won his point, though the dean of Dublin made a protest against the revised office during the ceremony. When the accession of Queen Mary inaugurated a reaction in matters of religion, he was forced to get out of the country again. He tried to escape to Scotland, but on the voyage was captured by a Dutch man-of-war, which was driven by bad weather into St Ives, Cornwall. Bale was arrested on suspicion of treason, but soon released. At Dover he had another narrow escape, but he eventually made his way to the Netherlands and thence to Frankfurt and Basel. During his exile he devoted himself to writing. After his return, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, he received (1560) a prebendal stall at Canterbury, where he died and was buried in the cathedral.
The scurrility and vehemence with which "foul-mouthed Bale," as Anthony Wood calls him, attacked his enemies does not destroy the value of his contributions to literature, though his strong bias against Roman Catholic writers detracts from the critical value of his works. Of his mysteries and miracle plays only five have been preserved, but the titles of the others, quoted by himself in his Catalogus, show that they were animated by the same political and religious aims. The Three Laws of Nature, Moses and Christ, corrupted by the Sodomytes, Phanisees and Papystes most wicked (pr. 1538 and again in 1562) was a morality play. The direction for the dressing of the parts is instructive: "Let Idolatry be decked like an old witch, Sodomy like a monk of all sects, Ambition like a bishop, Covetousness like a Pharisee or spiritual lawyer, False Doctrine like a popish doctor, and Hypocrisy like a gray friar." A Tragedye; or enterlude many Jesting the chief promyses of God unto Man . . . (1538, printed in Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. 1), The Temptacyon of our Lorde (ed. AB Grosart in Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library, vol. j., 1870), and A brefe Comedy or Enterlude of Johan Baptystes preachynge in the Wyldernesse, etc.. (Harl. Misc. vol i.) were all written in 1538. His plays are doggerel, but he is a figure of some dramatic importance as the author of Kynge Johan (c.1548), which marks the transition between the old morality play and the English historical drama. It does not appear to have directly influenced the creators of the chronicle histories. To the authors of the Troublesome Raigne of King John (1591) it was apparently unknown, but it is noteworthy that an attempt, however feeble, at historical drama was made fourteen years before the production of Gorboduc. Kynge Johan (ed. JP Collier, Camden Soc. 1838) is itself a polemic against the Roman Catholic Church. King John is represented as the champion of English rites against the Roman see:--
Bale's most important work is Illustrium majoris Britanniae scriptorum, hoc est, Angliae, Cambriae, ac Scotiae Summarium...(Ipswich and Wesel, for John Overton, 1548, 1549). This contained five centuries, but another edition, almost entirely rewritten and containing fourteen centuries, was printed at Basel with the title Scriptorum illustnium majoris Britanniae...Catalogus (1557-1559). The chronological catalogue of British authors and their works was partly founded on the Collectanea and Commentarii of John Leland, but Bale was an indefatigable collector and worker, and himself examined many of the valuable libraries of the Augustinian and Carmelite houses before their dissolution. In his notebook he records as an instance of the wholesale destruction in progress: "I have bene also at Norwyche, our second citye of name, and there all the library monuments are turned to the use of their grossers, candelmakers, sopesellers, and other worldly occupyers . . . As much have I saved there and in certen other places in Northfolke and Southfolke concerning the authors names and titles of their workes, as I could, and as much wold I have done through out the whole realm, yf I had been able to have borne the charges, as I am not." His work is therefore invaluable, in spite of the inaccuracies and the abuse lavished on Catholic writers, for it contains much information that would otherwise have been hopelessly lost.
A list of Bale's works is to be found in Athenae Cantabrigienses (vol. i. pp. 227 et seq.). Beside the reprints already mentioned, The Examinations of Lord Cobham, William Thorpe and Anne Askewe, &c. were edited by the Rev. H. Christmas for the Parker Society in 1849. Bale's autograph note-book is preserved in the Selden Collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It contains the materials he collected for his two published catalogues arranged alphabetically, with no attempt at ornament of any kind, and without the personalities which deface his completed work. He also gives in most cases the sources from which his information was derived. This book was prepared for publication with notes by Dr R. Lane Poole, with the help of Miss Mary Bateson, as Index Britanniae Scriptorum quos . . . . collegit loannes Baleus (Clarendon Press, 1902), forming part ix. of Anecdota Oxonwnsia.
John Pits or Pitseus (1560-1616), an English Catholic exile, founded on Bale's work his Relationum historicarum de rebus anglicis tomus primus (Paris, 1619), better known by its running title of De Illustribus Angliae scriptoribus. This is really the fourth book of a more extensive work. He omits the Wycliffite and Protestant divines mentioned by Bale, and the most valuable section is the lives ofthe Catholic exiles resident in Douai and other French towns. He does not scruple to assert (Nota de Joanne Bale) that Bale's Catalogus was a misrepresentation of John Leland's matter, though there is every reason to believe that he was only acquainted with Leland's work at second-hand, through Bale.