Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/324

 seller John Dunton [q. v.] as a hack-writer. In 1691 he translated ‘L'État de la France,’ a list of the nobility and high officials of France, with an account of their privileges and duties, under the title of ‘Galliæ Notitia; or the Present State of France’ (London, 12mo). He also edited for Dunton the ‘Compleat Library; or News for the Ingenious,’ which appeared monthly between May 1692 and April 1694, and ‘took the private minutes’ from which ‘The Secret History of Whitehall’ was composed by David Jones (fl. 1676–1720) [q. v.] The fact that he did not himself write ‘The Secret History’ renders it probable that he died some time before it was published in 1697, perhaps about the date at which the ‘Compleat Library’ ceased to appear. Dunton describes Wolley as ‘an universal scholar,’ and adds that ‘he performed to a nicety’ all the work entrusted to him.

[Information kindly given by the president of Queens' College, Cambridge; Wolley's Works; Dunton's Life and Errors, 1818, i. 163.] 

WOLLSTONECRAFT, MARY (1759–1797), miscellaneous writer. [See {{sc|Godwin, Mrs. Mary Wollstonecraft.]

WOLEMAN. [See also {{sc|Woolman}}.]

WOLMAN or WOLEMAN, RICHARD (d. 1537), dean of Wells, is surmised by Cooper (Athenæ Cantabr. i. 63) to have been the son of Richard Wolman, cater to John Howard, duke of Norfolk. There was a family of the name at Alderford, Norfolk ({{sc|Blomefield}}, Norfolk, viii. 184; Index of Wills, ii. 589). In 1478 Richard Wolman was a member of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He also studied abroad, being entered in the Oxford register as doctor of the civil law ‘of an university beyond the seas’ ({{sc|Wood}}, Fasti, i. 89). He was principal of St. Paul's Inn, in the university of Cambridge, in 1510, and commenced doctor of canon law in 1512. On 31 Oct. 1514 he was admitted an advocate, and on 9 April 1522 collated to the archdeaconry of Sudbury. In 1524 he became vicar of Walden, Essex, and on 26 July of the same year canon of St. Stephen's, Westminster. He appears to have been resident at court in 1525, and to have been an intermediary with the king, during the absence of Wolsey, in the matter of ecclesiastical preferments. He was made chaplain to the king in 1526, and a master of requests in attendance at the court, an office involving membership of the king's council. On 4 July 1526 he was presented to the living of Amersham, but he continued to reside at court.

On 17 May 1527 Wolsey sat at his house at Westminster to hear the pleadings in the divorce suit. On this occasion Wolman was nominated by the king promoter of the suit. On 5 and 6 April 1527 he took the evidence of Bishop Foxe [see {{sc|Foxe, Richard}}] as to Henry's protest against the marriage with Catherine. On 31 May he brought forward this evidence and adduced arguments against the dispensing power of the pope. During the proceedings Wolman acted as a secret negotiator between the king and Wolsey. His reward was a prebend in St. Paul's Cathedral (25 June) and a third share of the advowson of the first canonry and prebend void in St. Stephen's, Westminster. He is frequently referred to as a canonist of authority by the correspondents of the king and of Wolsey during the divorce proceedings. He was one of twenty-one commissioners to whom Wolsey, on 11 June 1529, delegated the hearing of causes in chancery (Letters and Papers, iv. 5666; {{sc|Rymer}}, Fœdera, xiv. 299). It was presumably in his capacity of member of the king's council that he was one of the signatories of the address to Clement VII in favour of the divorce by ‘the spiritual and temporal lords’ (13 July 1530; ib. xiv. 405; Letters and Papers, iv. 6513). His name appears here under the heading of ‘milites et doctores in parlamento.’

Some time after 29 Aug. 1529 and before 8 Nov. following, when he was elected prolocutor of convocation, Wolman was appointed dean of Wells. In October 1531 he was incorporated at Oxford ({{sc|Wood}}, Fasti, i. 89), having supplicated as long before as 1523 (ib. p. 64). He sat upon the committee of convocation which on 10 April 1532 received the subscription of Latimer (Hugh Latimer) to articles propounded to him. On the following 30 June he was presented by the crown to the rectory of High Hunger (Ongar), Essex. When, in October 1532, Henry VIII had left England for an interview with Francis I at Boulogne, Wolman was acting as one of the council exercising the royal power in London. On 19 March 1533 he was made canon of Windsor ({{sc|Le Neve}}, iii. 392). As dean of Wells he signed the acknowledgment of the royal supremacy on 6 July 1534 ({{sc|Rymer}}, Fœdera, xiv. 496; Letters and Papers, vii. 1024). He evidently cultivated Cromwell's favour and supported the new queen (Anne Boleyn). He signed a declaration, as a doctor of canon law, on the subject of holy orders in 1536. This was put forward in support of the recent religious changes, and bore the signature of Cromwell, as the king's vicegerent, at its