Thomas Thirlby

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Roman Catholic
ParentsJohn and Joan Thirleby
Previous post(s)
  • Bishop of Norwich 1550–1554
  • Bishop of Westminster
    1540–1550
  • Archdeacon of Ely
    1534–1540
Alma materTrinity Hall, Cambridge

Thomas Thirlby (or Thirleby; c. 1506–1570), was the first and only

Henrician schism, with its rejection in principle of the Roman papacy, he remained otherwise loyal to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church during the English Reformation
.

Life

Thomas, was the son of John Thirleby,

king
, were his early patrons. Cranmer "liked his learning and his qualities so well that he became his good lord towards the king's majesty, and commended him to him, to be a man worthy to serve a prince, for such singular qualities as were in him. And indeed the king soon employed him in embassies in France and elsewhere: so that he grew in the king's favour by the means of the archbishop, who had a very extraordinary love for him, and thought nothing too much to give him or to do for him."

In 1533 he was one of the king's chaplains, and in May communicated to Cranmer "the king's commands" relative to the sentence of divorce from

nullity of the king's marriage with Anne of Cleves
. In the same year he was one of the commissioners appointed by the king to deliberate upon sundry points of religion then in controversy, and especially upon the doctrine of the sacraments.

By

Sir Philip Hoby and Sir Thomas Cheyne. On 29 March 1550 Thirlby resigned the bishopric of Westminster into the hands of the king, who thereupon dissolved it, and reannexed the county of Middlesex, which had been assigned for its diocese, to the see of London.[17] While bishop of Westminster he is said to have "impoverished the church."[18]

On 1 April, following his resignation of the see of Westminster, he was constituted

£; and to survey the state of all the courts erected for the custody of the king's lands. In April 1553 he was again appointed ambassador to the Emperor Charles V, at whose court he remained until April 1554.[21] On his return from Germany he brought with him one Remegius, who established a paper mill in this country—perhaps at Fen Ditton, near Cambridge.[22]

At heart a Roman Catholic, Thirlby was soon high in Queen Mary's favour, and in July 1554 he was translated from Norwich to Ely, the temporalities of the latter see being delivered to him on 15 September.[23] He was one of the prelates who presided at the trials of Bishop Hooper, John Rogers, Rowland Taylor, and others, for heresy; and in February 1554–5 he was appointed, together with Anthony Browne, viscount Montague, and Sir Edward Carne, a special ambassador to the pope, to make the queen's obedience, and to obtain a confirmation of all those graces which Cardinal Pole had granted in his name. He returned to London from Rome on 24 August 1555 with a bull confirming the queen's title to Ireland, which document he delivered to the lord treasurer on 10 December. A curious journal of this embassy is printed in Lord Hardwicke's State Papers.[24]

After the death of the lord chancellor,

Earl of Arundel to act in conjunction with them. The commissioners succeeded in concluding peace, and returned home in April 1559. The queen is said to have cast upon Thirlby the entire blame of the eventual loss of Calais.[29]
Queen Mary had appointed him one of her executors.

On the assembling of Queen Elizabeth's first parliament Thirlby sent his proxy, he being then absent on his embassy in France. On 17 April 1559 the bill for restoring ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the crown was committed to him and other peers. He opposed this measure on the third reading. He also dissented from the bill for uniformity of common prayer.

oath of supremacy, and for this reason he and Archbishop Heath were deposed from their sees on 5 July 1559 at the lord-treasurer's house in Broad Street
.

According to

£500 from Bishop Goodrich's executors for dilapidations, he left his houses, bridges, lodes, rivers, causeways, and banks, in great ruin and decay, and spoiled the see of a stock of one thousand marks, which his predecessors had enjoyed since the reign of Edward III. He also alleged that Thirlby never came into his diocese.[31]

After his deprivation Thirlby had his liberty for some time, but in consequence of his persisting in preaching against the Reformation, he was on 3 June 1560 committed to the Tower, and on 25 February 1560–1 he was excommunicated.[32] In September 1563 he was removed from the Tower on account of the plague to Archbishop Parker's house at Beaksbourne.[33] In June 1564 he was transferred to Lambeth Palace, and Parker, who is said to have treated Thirlby with great courtesy and respect, even permitted him to lodge for some time at the house of one Mrs. Blackwell in Blackfriars. He died in Lambeth Palace on 26 August 1570. He was buried on the 28th in the chancel of Lambeth church, under a stone with a brief Latin inscription in brass.[34] In making a grave for the burial of Archbishop Cornwallis in March 1783, the body of Bishop Thirlby was discovered in his coffin, in a great measure undecayed, as was the clothing. The corpse had a cap on its head and a hat under its arm.[35] His portrait is in the print of the delivery of the charter of Bridewell.

Notes

  1. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 135 cites: Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, ii. 262.
  2. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 135 cites: Strype, Eccl. Mem. ii. i. 279.
  3. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 135 cites: Addit. MS. 5825, p. 36.
  4. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 135 cites: Hatcher, Hist. of Sarum, p. 701.
  5. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, xii. 350.
  6. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: ib. xii. 320, 350.
  7. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Harl. MS. 7571, f. 35.
  8. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Addit. MS. 25114, f. 297.
  9. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 836.
  10. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Strype, Cranmer, p. 90.
  11. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Acts P. C. ed. Dasent, vol. i. passim.
  12. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: State Papers, Hen. VIII, x. 428.
  13. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Rymer, xv. 120–1.
  14. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Cal. State Papers, For. i. 24.
  15. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer, pp. 162, 164, 166, 167, 171, 256, 263, 403, 404, 427.
  16. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Original Letters, Parker Soc. ii. 645, 646.
  17. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 136 cites: Bentham, Hist. of Ely, p. 191.
  18. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Stow, Survey of London, ed. Thoms, p. 170.
  19. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Rymer, Fœdera, xv. 221.
  20. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Hist. of the Reformation, ed. 1841, ii. 753.
  21. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Acts P. C. iv. 246, 390.
  22. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Cooper, Annals, ii. 132, 265.
  23. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Rymer, xv. 405.
  24. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: i. 62–102, from Harleian MS. 252, art. 15.
  25. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Despatches of Michiel, the Venetian Ambassador, 1554–7, ed. Paul Friedmann, Venice, 1869.
  26. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Burnet, i. 531.
  27. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Fuller, Church Hist. ed. 1837, i. 395.
  28. ^ G.M.G. Woodgate (1931). Wisbech in the Ely Episcopal Registers. The Isle of Ely and Wisbech Advertiser. p. 28.
  29. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: Strype, Life of Whitgift, i. 229.
  30. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 137 cites: cf. Zurich Letters, i. 20.
  31. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 138 cites: Strype, Annals of the Reformation, ii. 580.
  32. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 138 cites: Strype, ib. i. 142.
  33. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 138 cites: Parker Correspondence, pp. 122, 192, 195, 203, 215, 217.
  34. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 138 cites: Stow, Survey of London, ed. Strype, App. p. 85.
  35. ^ Cooper 1898, p. 138 cites: Lodge, Illustrations of British History, ed. 1838, i. 73 n.

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