John Bird (died 1558) was an English Carmelite friar and subsequently a bishop.
He was Warden of the Carmelite house in Coventry, and twice Provincial of his order. [2] [3] He attracted the attention of Henry VIII by his preaching in favour of the royal supremacy over the English Church. [4]
He was one of the divines sent in 1531 to confer and argue with Thomas Bilney, the reformer, in prison; and in 1535 he was sent by Henry VIII along with Richard Foxe, the royal almoner, and Thomas Bedyll, a clerk of the council, to Catherine of Aragon, now divorced by Henry, to try to persuade her not to use the title queen. [5]
He was suffragan to the Bishop of Llandaff (titled Bishop of Penrydd (then spelled Penreth), after Penrydd in Pembrokeshire [6] and was then translated to become Bishop of Bangor. He then was appointed as the inaugural Bishop of Chester. The new diocese had both administrative and financial problems: Bird tried to address the finances, and dispensed with archdeacons, but succeeded only in making disadvantageous agreements with the Crown and with leaseholders. [7]
After the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary he was deprived of his bishopric on 16 March 1554 since he had married. [8] He at once repudiated his wife, and soon afterwards Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, appointed him as his suffragan, and on 6 November 1554 presented him to the vicarage of Great Dunmow in Essex. [9]
Near the end of 1558, he died in an obscure condition and was buried in Chester Cathedral. [5]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Cooper, Thompson (1886). "Bird, John (d.1558)". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 5. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Cuthbert Tunstall was an English humanist, bishop, diplomat, administrator and royal adviser. He served as Bishop of Durham during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.
Thomas Thirlby, was the first and only bishop of Westminster (1540–50), and afterwards successively bishop of Norwich (1550–54) and bishop of Ely (1554–59). While he acquiesced in the 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.
Bishop Rowland Lee was an English clergyman who served as Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield 1534–43 and also as Lord President of the Marches under King Henry VIII.
John Scory was an English Dominican friar who later became a bishop in the Church of England.
Sir Thomas Goodrich was an English ecclesiastic and statesman who was Bishop of Ely from 1534 until his death.
John Vesey or Veysey was Bishop of Exeter from 1519 until his death in 1554, having been briefly deposed 1551–3 by King Edward VI for his opposition to the Reformation.
The Diocese of Chester is a Church of England diocese in the Province of York covering the pre-1974 county of Cheshire and therefore including the Wirral and parts of Stockport, Trafford and Tameside.
The Diocese of Quilon is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church based in the southern Indian city of Kollam. It is a suffragan in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Trivandrum. The Diocese of Quilon covers an area of 1,950 km2 that contains a population of some 4.8 million. At least 4.8% of the people in the area are Catholic.
Thomas Young was a Bishop of St David's and Archbishop of York (1561–1568).
The Suffragan Bishops Act 1534 is an Act of the Parliament of England that authorised the appointment of suffragan bishops in England and Wales. The tradition of appointing suffragans named after a town in the diocese other than the town the diocesan bishop is named after can be dated from this act.
William Petow was an English Franciscan friar and, briefly, a Cardinal.
Events from the 1530s in England.
Ralph Baines or "Bayne" was the last Roman Catholic Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, in England.
The Bishop of Penrydd was a suffragan see in the Church of England named in the Suffragan Bishops Act 1534.
Henry Cole was a senior English Roman Catholic churchman and academic.
Paul Bush was an English Augustinian and the first bishop of Bristol of the new diocese.
William Chedsey (1510?–1574?) was an English Roman Catholic priest and academic, who became archdeacon of Middlesex in 1556 and President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1558.
The Bishop of Bristol heads the Church of England Diocese of Bristol in the Province of Canterbury, in England.
The Bishop of Chester is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Chester in the Province of York.
Penrydd is a former parish in the Hundred of Kilgerran, north Pembrokeshire, Wales. The parish's history is closely linked with that of Castellan, and included parts of the present villages of Blaenffos and Crymych.