December 23 – Roger Ascham (born c. 1515), English scholar, didactic writer and poet; died from a chill contracted when staying up all night to finish a New Year's Day poem for Queen Elizabeth I, whom he had tutored
^ abcdCox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN0-19-860634-6
^Rollins, Hyder E., and Herschel Baker, The Renaissance in England: Non-dramatic Prose and Verse of the Sixteenth Century, p 77 (1954), Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company