The wide‐ranging oeuvre of John Bale (1495–1563) includes polemics, drama, bibliography, martyrology, and exegesis. His life overlapped with the reigns of all five Tudor monarchs, and his biography mirrors the religious upheavals of sixteenth‐century England. Bale's perspective was always historical, and his works illustrate both the distinctive features of the mid‐Tudor era and the continuities between the late medieval and early modern periods.