Thomas Thirlby

Thomas Thirlby (c.1500-1570) was an English cleric — one of the confessor bishops loyal to the Pope during the reformation.

Related Topics:
English - Confessor bishop - Pope - Reformation

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He was born in Cambridge, the first of three children. By 1521 he had graduated BCL from Trinity Hall, Cambridge. After his undergraduate years, he was elected a fellow of his college, and proceeded to doctorates in civil and canon law in 1528 and 1530.

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He received patronage from Stephen Gardiner, the king's secretary and the master of Trinity Hall. From 1528-31 Thirlby was working for the University, on legal affairs. In 1532 he was appointed to his first benefice, the rectory of Ribchester, Lancashire. By 1533 he had come to Thomas Cromwell's notice, and was regarded as sympathetic to Henry VIII's plans for divorce. The king made Thirlby his chaplain, probably at the instance of Thomas Cranmer (who had known Thirlby since Cambridge, and whose evangelical opinions Thirlby at this time shared).

Related Topics:
Stephen Gardiner - Thomas Cromwell - Henry VIII - Thomas Cranmer

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After the King's divorce in May 1533, was sent to France to explain the king's matrimonial situation (28 May ? 1 September). On his return he was rewarded with promotion to archdeacon of Ely. In 1534 Thirlby was made provost of St Edmund's College, Salisbury. He was at court to attend the baptism of the future Edward VI on 15th October. Five days later he was granted a canonry in the royal free chapel of St Stephen in Westminster.

Related Topics:
Ely - Edward VI

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During 1537 Thirlby had been among those working on the Bishops' Book. Early in the following year he was sent on diplomatic missions: from April to August 1538, with Gardiner and Sir Francis Bryan, he was sent to France to promote a marriage treaty between Henry VIII's daughter Mary and the duc d'Orléans. Thirlby was embarrassed by his poor grasp of French, especially as spoken by François I. Their mission was, however, overshadowed by a Franco-imperial concordat which excluded England.

Related Topics:
Bishops' Book - François I

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On the 17 December 1540 the new diocese of Westminster was created and, by the same patent, Thirlby was appointed its bishop. He had Middlesex for his territory and Westminster Abbey for his cathedral. He was consecrated on 19 December in Henry VII's chapel there. He took his seat in the House of Lords on 16 January 1541. As the first and only bishop of Westminster Thirlby was rarely at home in the former abbot's house (now the deanery). He never conducted a visitation, and was not present in the abbey for the two main state occasions held there when it was a cathedral?the coronation of Edward VI and that king's funeral. In the absence of its bishop the diocese functioned well enough; but the administration was in part handled by those who also served the parent diocese of London, by which Westminster was easily reabsorbed at the end of Thirlby's episcopate.

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By April 1541 Thirlby was dean of the Chapel Royal, a post he retained into Mary's reign. From June 1542 he was also a privy councillor. He headed an embassy to the emperor Charles V, then in northern Spain, as Henry VIII's mind turned again towards alliance against France.

Related Topics:
Chapel Royal - Privy councillor - Charles V

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In 1543 he was appointed to negotiate a marriage between Prince Edward and Mary, queen of Scots, which never came to fruition. He played a leading part in shaping the King's Book of Necessary Doctrine in 1543. In July 1544 he was appointed a counsellor of state during the king's absence in the French war. In 1545 Thirlby, with Sir William Petre and others, represented England at the imperial Diet of Bourbourg; when these meetings ended in July, Thirlby remained as resident ambassador to the imperial court. He was present at the battlefield of Mühlberg (24 April 1547) where the advance of protestantism was decisively checked.

Related Topics:
Mary, queen of Scots - Mühlberg

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Henry VIII's will had pointedly excluded Thirlby and Gardiner from the regency council. It was expected that Thirlby would be replaced as ambassador by Sir John Mason in April 1547, but he served a further year. On 14 April 1548 Edward formally notified the emperor that Thirlby had been recalled, and that Sir Philip Hoby would succeed him. Charles, writing from Augsburg on 8 June, replied that the returning ambassador had ?always acted with great modesty and discretion in the discharge of his duty? (CSP Spain, 1547?9, 270?71). Hoby felt that Thirlby's ?politique and wise sorte for serche of intelligence? had been ?so well and wittely guided? that he was himself unworthy to take his place (BL, Harley MS 523, fols. 108?108v).

Related Topics:
Sir John Mason - Sir Philip Hoby

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Thirlby was home in time to attend discussions on liturgical reform held at Chertsey in September 1548. At the debate in the Lords in December he took exception to changes made to the eucharistic policy document agreed at Chertsey, from which he found omitted all mention of ?adoration? and ?oblation?. He was in turn criticized by Protector Somerset for breaking the common front to which the latter considered the bishops were committed. Somerset spoke to the king of his disappointment at Thirlby's conservatism, to which the young monarch allegedly replied: ?I expected ? nothing else but that he, who had been so long time with the emperor as ambassador, should smell of the Interim? (Robinson, Original Letters, 2.646). Thirlby voted against the third reading of the Uniformity Bill on 15 January 1549, though he complied with the law as subsequently enacted. On 12 April he was again named to a heresy commission.

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In February 1550 the privy council, now led by Warwick, decided the diocese of Westminster should be dissolved. This was chiefly to allow more scope for the reformist Nicholas Ridley, who had been designated bishop of London. Thirlby was therefore required to surrender his see on 30 March. On 1 April Ridley became bishop of the reunited metropolitan diocese, while Thirlby was translated to Norwich. He was enthroned on 28 April; after that he rarely if ever entered his diocese. He was by no means in disgrace, for he was regularly employed in government business in the remaining years of Edward's reign. On 18 January 1551 he was appointed to a further heresy commission, in May he was sent to negotiate with the Scots, and during 1552 he was at least nominally involved in several of the financial commissions.

Related Topics:
Nicholas Ridley - Bishop of London

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On 2 April 1553 Thirlby was sent back to Brussels as resident. Audience with the emperor was delayed until early June, when Charles was reported to be frail but alert. The failing health of Thirlby's own sovereign was by this time of more concern; news of Edward's death reached Brussels on 11 July. Queen Mary retained Thirlby in post, but brought him back to attend her first parliament. On 25 October he was admitted to the privy council, and was expected to belong to its innermost circle. He returned to Brussels on 29 December, and in January 1554 he received Cardinal Pole there on his way to England as legate. Thirlby had his final audience with Charles V on 1 May, returning to England to assist at the queen's marriage with the emperor's son Philip in Winchester Cathedral on 25 July. The queen had given Thirlby the superior see of Ely, to which he was elected on 30 July, and where he was enthroned by proxy on 24 September. His appointment was ratified by papal provision on 21 June 1555, the bull being among those that Thirlby himself, along with Viscount Montagu and Sir Edward Carne, went to Rome to receive. This embassy left Calais on 27 February and, after a meeting with Henri II, proceeded south in a leisurely way, learning of the death of two successive popes and finding time to inspect a giant tortoise at Ferrara. The ambassadors were eventually received by Paul IV on 8 June, and had a final audience on the 16th. Thirlby received a gold cross from the pope; the more substantial achievement was papal confirmation of the deal that Pole had made with parliament in the previous December, the necessary financial preconditions to the reunion with Rome. Carne remained in Rome as resident; Montagu and Thirlby returned by Venice, and were back in London on 24 August.

Related Topics:
Queen Mary - Cardinal Pole - Winchester Cathedral - Viscount Montagu - Sir Edward Carne - Henri II - Paul IV

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In his absence Thirlby had been thought likely to succeed the earl of Bedford as lord privy seal. On his return he was promoted to the ?select? group of eight privy councillors who had particular responsibility to liaise with the now absent King Philip. In October he took temporary custody of the great seal when Gardiner became ill. In November, following Gardiner's death, the queen proposed Thirlby as ?most worthy? to become lord chancellor in his place (CSP Venice, 1555?6, 257). Philip, however, preferred Paget, and Archbishop Heath emerged as compromise candidate. It was the only time Thirlby came close to the high political office for which he would seem to have been so admirably qualified. A less welcome prominence fell to him when he was required to perform the ritual degradation of Cranmer at Oxford on 14 February 1556. There is no reason to doubt that his execution of this duty was reluctant and tearful.

Related Topics:
Earl of Bedford - Lord privy seal - Archbishop Heath

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It was expected that Thirlby would return to Brussels later in 1556; in fact he remained in England and was engaged in occasional public duties. He never resided in his diocese of Ely, relying on the capable chancellor, John Fuller, who had previously served him at Norwich. But he continued to be employed as a diplomat, his final mission coming when England sought to conclude the war with France to which the queen's marriage had led. Thirlby was (with the earl of Arundel and Dr Nicholas Wotton) employed in the negotiations at Cercamp from October 1558; from there they moved to Brussels and then to Chateau Cambrésis, where the treaty was concluded on 3 April 1559. Thirlby had thus been abroad yet again when his monarch died. Queen Elizabeth had issued a new commission to Thirlby and his colleagues five days after her accession, renewed in January 1559.

Related Topics:
John Fuller - Earl of Arundel - Dr Nicholas Wotton - Queen Elizabeth

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Beyond the completion of this work Thirlby felt unable to adapt his conscience once more to serve a new regime. He returned to the Lords in April 1559 when parliament was already in session. He was reckoned the keenest opponent of the reformist cause. He voted against the Uniformity Bill, and refused the oath of supremacy which the subsequent legislation required. On or by 5 July he and the other dissenting bishops were deprived of their sees. Their open hostility to the religious settlement, and their refusal to attend prayer book services, eventually provoked harsher treatment. On 3 June 1560 Thirlby was taken to the Tower of London; in his absence there he was excommunicated on 25 February 1561. In September he and the other prominent Catholic prisoners were permitted to associate in specified groups of four. In September 1563, when plague made London unhealthy even for state prisoners, Thirlby and the former secretary John Boxall were released to house arrest in Archbishop Parker's custody. Parker's immediate concern was the risk of infection; but after a period of quarantine Thirlby (with his manservant and boy) joined the archbishop's household. In this honourable and not uncongenial captivity Thirlby passed his final years. He died at Lambeth Palace on 26 August 1570 and was buried two days later in the parish church there. His coffin was opened in 1783 and the body was exhibited in a good state of preservation.

Related Topics:
Tower of London - John Boxall - Archbishop Parker - Lambeth Palace

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Thirlby was of the last generation of episcopal diplomats; to his competence in his lay capacity (once he had mastered the French language) there are many testimonies. His employments abroad left him little opportunity to influence ecclesiastical affairs at home. His absence undoubtedly contributed to the failure of Westminster to survive as a diocese; it is unfortunate that Thirlby's name should principally be linked to that abortive scheme

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Sources:

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C. S. Knighton, ?Thirlby, Thomas (c.1500-1570)?, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 23 July 2005

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See also:

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T. F. Shirley, ?Thomas Thirlby, Tudor Bishop ? ,Publisher: SPCK , (1964 ), Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone Road, London N.W.1 , UK

Related Topics:
SPCK - 1964 - London

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