John Worcester was born on May 8, 1427 at Eversden, Cambridge, England; the of son of John Tiptoft, who was Speaker of the House of Commons in 1406, much employed in diplomacy by Henry V, a member of the council during the minority of Henry VI, and created Baron Tiptoft in 1426.
The younger Tiptoft was educated at Oxford, where John Rous says that he was one of his fellow-students; he is stated to have been a member of Balliol College.
He was abroad three years, during which he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; the rest of the time he spent in Italy, at Padua, where he studied law and Latin; at Ferrara, where he made the acquaintance of Guarino of Verona; and at Florence, where he heard the lectures of John Argyropoulos, the teacher of Greek.
In 1449 he was created earl of Worcester.
During York's protectorate he was Treasurer of the Exchequer, and in 1456-1457 Deputy of Ireland.
In 1457 and again in 1459 he was sent on embassies to the Pope.
He returned to England early in the reign of Edward IV, and on the 7th of February 1462 was made constable of England.
In 1463 he commanded at sea, without success.
In the following year as constable he tried and condemned Sir Ralph Grey and other Lancastrians.
In 1467 he was again appointed deputy of Ireland.
During a year's office there he had the earl of Desmond attainted, and cruelly put to death the earl's two infant sons.
On the Lancastrian restoration Worcester fled into hiding, but was discovered and tried before the earl of Oxford, son of the man whom he had condemned in 1462.
He was executed on Tower Hill on the 18th of October 1470.
He translated Cicero's De amicitia and Buonaccorso's Declaration of Nobleness, which were printed by Caxton in 1481.
Worcester is also credited with a translation of Caesar's Commentaries printed in 1530.
His "ordinances for justes and triumphes, " made as constable in 1466, are printed in Harrington's Nugae antiquae.
Worcester was a patron of the early English humanist John Free, and his Italian friends included Lodovico Carbo of Ferrara, and the famous Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci.
He was one of the first Englishmen to become familiar with the learning of the Italian Renaissance.
In this capacity he tried and sentenced to death many of the Lancastrian leaders.
He again became (1467) lord deputy of Ireland and had the earl of Desmond executed—and, it is claimed, Desmond's two sons as well.
His translation of Cicero's De amicitia was printed by William Caxton in 1481.
He married Cicely, daughter of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and widow of Henry Beauchamp (d. 1445), duke of Warwick.
His wife died in 1450, but he continued the association with the Yorkist party.
