Henry Brinklow

Henry Brinklow, also Brynklow or Brinkelow (died 1545 or 1546), was an English polemicist. As he worked for a number of years under the pseudonym Roderyck, or Roderigo, Mors, he may also be referred to by this name in contemporaneous accounts.

Life as Henry Brinklow Henry Brinklow was the eldest of nine children of Robert Brinklow, a farmer in Kintbury, Berkshire. Robert died in 1543, leaving a widow Sibyl (or Isabel), who appears to have been the mother of Edward Butler of Reading by a former marriage, and may not have been the mother of Robert's children. Sibyl died in 1545, also leaving a will.

Brinklow lived most of his life in London, where he could observe many of the political changes in England. He became a mercer – at that time probably meaning a merchant in cloth and similar commodities. This career brought him into company with Evangelical Christians, such as the Mercers' Company chaplain and reformer Richard Harris, and was to influence his favour for evangelical reform. secondly (c. 1550) to George Rolle, Esquire, and thirdly (before 1556) to Sir Leonard Chamberlain of Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

Throughout his life, Brinklow was never publicly associated with the writings of Roderick Mors. It was not until the 1550s that it was revealed, by the churchman and controversialist John Bale, that Mors was Brinklow's pseudonym. The pseudonym was carefully protected; Brinklow had all his work printed abroad. Bishop Stephen Gardiner suspected that Mors was a pseudonym, but that it was the creation of George Joye. He demanded that traditional religion be completely swept away – '' (bishops) and all – and criticised Henry VIII for his ambivalence over reform. Where the government and the church were at odds, he condemned both. For example, he reviled monasteries, but equally reviled the Dissolution of the Monasteries – despite also putting forward a "programme for full-scale redistribution of ecclesiastical wealth". Calls for religious reform were accompanied by equally radical calls for social reform, such as "reform of rents, enclosures, wardships, and of the heresy and treason laws; for a stipendiary bar and judiciary; and for the two houses of parliament to be merged". , and, according to one source, were to live on this payment on pain of mutilation.

His ideas and beliefs were published in three or four polemics. He is the definite author of three works, though one is lost. The two surviving are The Complaynt of Roderyck Mors (1542), and Lamentacion of a Christian (1542). It is possible that he is the author of A Supplication of the Poore Commons, printed in the year of his death, 1546. His known works went through at least eight editions. What loss feels he that wots not what he loses? (Complaynt of Roderick Mors)