Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/411

 and on the translation of Cuthbert Tunstal [q. v.] to Durham, Stokesley was during his absence nominated bishop of London in July 1530. He returned in October, and was consecrated on 27 Nov.

As bishop of London Stokesley shared in the further measures for the completion of the divorce, and concurred in the various enactments which abolished the papal authority in England. He was with Cranmer at Dunstable when the sentence of divorce was pronounced against Catherine, and on 10 Sept. 1533 he christened at the Greyfriars Church, Greenwich, Princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth. He took part in the dissolution of monasteries at Reading, Godstow, and others in Lincolnshire (Cotton MS. Cleopatra E. iv. ff. 223, 225, 235–7; Arundel MS. 249 ff. 82–4), and he induced the Carthusians of London to submit to Henry. Conjointly with Tunstal he wrote in 1537 a remonstrance to Pole on his book, ‘Pro Unitatis Ecclesiæ Defensione,’ and on his acceptance of the cardinalate; it is printed in Bernard Garter's ‘New Year's Gift,’ 1571. In August 1531 he was employed to assess for taxation various benefices, a measure which roused the indignation of their holders. They assembled on the 31st in the Greyfriars Church, London, and ‘made an assault on the Bishop's palace at Paul's, where they continued an hour and a half, and, from thence returning to the chapter-house, made a new assault on the bishop and his officers, whom they put in fear of their lives’ (Letters and Papers, v. 387). The ringleaders were brought before the Star-chamber on a charge of attempting to murder the bishop and evade payment of the clerical subsidy (cf., i. 340; , i. 68–9).

Stokesley, however, was strenuously opposed to all doctrinal changes; even the royal supremacy he accepted only with a proviso safeguarding ‘the laws of the church of Christ,’ and he became a strenuous persecutor of gospellers. On 3 July 1533 he reported to Henry that he had condemned John Frith [q. v.] for heresy, and handed him over for execution to the lord mayor (Letters and Papers, vi. 761;, v. 16). He attacked Alexander Alesius [q. v.] in the convocation of 1537, and argued against John Lambert (d. 1538) [q. v.] According to Foxe he boasted on his deathbed of having been the means of executing over thirty heretics (, iii. 104; cf., Vita Juelli, p. 268). Similarly he refused to revise the translation of the ‘Acts of the Apostles’ which Cranmer had entrusted to him when preparing an English version of the Bible, declaring that reading it in English infected the people with heresy (Narr. of the Reformation, Camden Soc. pp. 277–278). He also resisted Cranmer's metropolitical visitation of his diocese, and joined with Tunstal in giving as catholic a colour as possible to the ‘Institution of a Christian Man,’ 1537.

This attitude laid Stokesley open to Cromwell's hostility, and he was subjected to various vexatious proceedings. In 1535 he was required to send the king a written copy of a certain sermon he had preached; he excused himself by saying that he never wrote out his sermons. ‘If I were to write my sermons, I could not deliver them as they are written, for much would come to me without premeditation much better than what was premeditated’ (Letters and Papers, viii. 1054). On 29 May 1538 the attorney-general, Sir John Baker [q. v.], instituted proceedings against Stokesley on the king's behalf, accusing him of infringing statutes 16 Richard II and 28 Henry VIII by executing a bull of Martin V. The bishop, who was brought into court in the marshal's custody, confessed his offence and was admitted to bail; when called upon to receive judgment he produced a pardon from Henry VIII (ib. xiii. i. 1095). He also complained bitterly of the way in which the king assumed the right of presenting to prebends in his diocese, and declared that he could have no learned men about him because he had no means of providing for them.

Stokesley died on the anniversary of his birthday, on 8 Sept. 1539, and was buried in St. George's Chapel, St. Paul's Cathedral, on the 14th. A memorial, with a Latin inscription, an English version of which is given in Wood's ‘Athenæ,’ ii. 749, was erected over his tomb. A portrait, painted by Holbein is at Windsor, and a copy of it, presented by J. R. Bloxam, hangs in Magdalen College School, Oxford.

[Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner, vols. iii–xiv.; State Papers, Henry VIII, 1830; Inquisitiones post mortem, 2 Edw. VI, ii. 28, 3 Edw. VI, i. 109; Cotton MSS. Otho C. x. 161, Cleopatra E. iv. 207 b, 223, 225, 237, v. 378; Arundel MS. 249 ff. 82–4; Foxe's Actes and Mon. ed. Townsend; Strype's Works (General Index); Wriothesley's Chronicle; Narratives of the Reformation, Greyfriars' Chronicle, and Pretended Divorce of Catherine of Aragon (Camden Soc.); Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ii. 746–50; Hall's Chron.; Wilkins's Concilia; Le Neve's Fasti, ed. Hardy; Pocock's Records of the Reformation; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation, ed. Pocock; Fuller's Church Hist. ed. Brewer; Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII; Oxford Univ. Reg.; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Bloxam's and Macray's Registers