Perne was educated at
St John's College, Cambridge, graduating
BA in 1539, BD in 1547 and
DD in 1552. He was elected fellow of St John's in 1540, but moved to
Queens' later that year. He was successively bursar and dean of Queens', while culminated in becoming vice-president in 1551, and was five times vice-chancellor of the university. Scurrilous Puritans said he had once been the homosexual lover of
John Whitgift, later Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom he went to live in old age at
Lambeth Palace. However, he owes his notoriety to his remarkable versatility, and, like
the Vicar of Bray, he was always faithful to the national religion, whatever it might be. A
weathervane he donated with his initials of AP was said to have swung between 'A Papist', 'A Protestant' and 'A Puritan', depending on which way the wind blew. In April 1547 he advocated
Catholic doctrines but recanted two months later, and his
Protestant faith was strengthened during
Edward VI's reign; he was appointed a royal chaplain and canon of Windsor. Soon after
Mary's accession, however, he perceived the error of his ways and was made Master of
Peterhouse in 1553 and Dean of Ely in 1557. He preached the sermon in 1557 when the bodies of
Martin Bucer and
Paul Fagius were disinterred in Cambridge and burnt for
heresy and also, remarkably, in 1560 when the proceedings were reversed and the dead heretics were rehabilitated. In
Elizabeth's reign, he subscribed the
Thirty-nine Articles, denounced the
pope and tried to convert
Abbot Feckenham to Protestantism, and in 1584,
Whitgift in vain recommended him for a bishopric. He was selected as the type of Anglican prelate by the authors of the
Martin Marprelate tracts and other Puritans, who nicknamed him "Old Andrew Turncoat", "Andrew Ambo", "Old Father Palinode". Cambridge wits, it was said, translated "perno" by "I turn, I rat, I change often", and a coat that had often been turned was said to have been "perned". The historian Alice Hogge recounts an episode in which a close friend asked Perne "to tell her honestly and simply which was the holy religion that see her safe to heaven". Perne replied that if she wished, she could
live in the religion which the Queen
(Elizabeth I) and the kingdom professed – Anglicanism – "but don't
die in it. Die in faith and communion with the Catholic Church, that is, if you want to save your soul". As Hogge notes wryly, he never had the chance to follow his own advice since he died suddenly on the way back to his room after dining and "in the headquarters of that faith [Anglicanism],
Lambeth Palace itself". On his death, he bequeathed the greater part of his library to
Peterhouse, where he had been Master, together with the funds to house it in what is now the Perne Library there. ==Notes==