Thomas Cromwell's accounts for September 1539 show an entry for “Balle and his fellows,” who were to be paid 40s for performing a play at St. Stephen's beside Canterbury. The play is not named, but it is almost certainly Kynge Johan, the most well-known dramatic work of the Reformer John Bale (1495–1563). Though “Bilious Bale,” as he was known at the time, became a member of the Carmelite order in 1507, he converted to the Reformist movement in 1533 and within six years composed this attack on the supposed evils and hypocrisies of the Church. In it, he suggests that the papacy aligned itself with England's “traitors” – namely, its lawyers, aristocrats, and proponents of private wealth – and had its spies poison King John. He suffuses a historical drama with contemporary propaganda that surely appealed to his guest of honor at St. Stephen's – none other than Cromwell himself.

In doing so, Bale also develops the character Imperyall Majestie as a remedy to the suffering of King Johan and his subjects, not to mention their heirs. The exact circumstances in which this figure was conceived are not known, for early drafts of the play do not survive, and there is not much evidence for when or how often it was revised. But as we shall see, the figure apparently descends from medieval saint plays, hagiography, and exempla, as well as English folk traditions that revolve around ghosts and revenants (the risen dead).