BALES, PETER, a famous caligraphist, and one of the first inventors of short-hand writing. He was born in 1547, and is described by Anthony Wood as a " most dexterous person in his profession, to the great wonder of scholars and others." We are also informed that "he spent several years in sciences among Oxonians, particularly, as it seems, in Gloucester Hall; but that study, which he used for a diversion only, proved at length an employment of profit." He is mentioned for his skill in micrography in Hollingshed's Chronicle, anno 1575. " Hadrian Junius," says Evelyn, "speaking as a miracle of somebody who wrote the Apostles' Creed and the beginning of St John's Gospel within the compass of a farthing : what would he have said of our famous Peter Bales, who, in the year 1575, wrote the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, Decalogue, with two short prayers in Latin, his own name, motto, day of the month, year of the Lord, and reign of the queen, to whom he presented it at Hampton Court, all of it written within the circle of a single penny, inchased in a ring and borders of gold, and covered with a crystal so accurately wrought as to be very plainly legible ; to the great admiration of her majesty, the whole privy council, and several ambassadors then at court1" Bales was likewise very dexterous in imitating handwritings, and about 1576 was employed by Secretary Walsinghain in certain political manoeuvres. We find him at the head of a school near the Old Bailey, London, in 1590, in which year he published his Writing Schoolmaster, in three Parts. In 1595 he had a great trial of skill with one Daniel Johnson, for a golden pen of £20 value, and won it ; and a contemporary author further relates that he had also the arms of caligraphy given him, which are azure, a pen or. Bales died about the year 1610.