John Capon, alias John Salcot (died 1557) was a Benedictine monk who became bishop of Bangor, then bishop of Salisbury under Henry VIII. He is often referred to as John Salcot alias Capon (variously spelt).
He graduated B.A. from the University of Cambridge, in 1488. He became prior of St John's Abbey, Colchester, and then abbot of St Benet's Hulme, in Norfolk. [1] He was a vocal supporter of Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon.
He was abbot of Hyde Abbey from 1530, and bishop of Bangor from 1533 (without papal approval); he was consecrated a bishop on 19 April 1534, by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln; and Christopher Lord, suffragan bishop of Canterbury and Bishop of Sidon. [2] It is believed that he never took up residence at Bangor, and he admitted that he found it a problem that he did not speak Welsh. [3] He was translated to become bishop of Salisbury in 1539. [4]
Under Mary I of England he was one of the commissioners involved in the trials of Protestants and condemned John Bradford, Laurence Saunders and Rowland Taylor to death. [5]
During John Capon's period as bishop of Salisbury the town and country witnessed some of its bloodiest years in its persecution of Protestants. The versatile, feared and unscrupulous Capon was Bishop at the time of the reign of Henry VIII and held it during the period of the protectorate, the reign of Edward VI, and Mary. As the king's commissioner he sent several to the stake in the days of Henry VIII. Under Edward VI he became a Protestant; and, changing once more to Catholic under Mary, sat as a judge at the trial of Bishop Hooper and John Rogers. He saw the fall of Thomas Cromwell, and the confiscation of chantries and colleges. During the more than twenty years of his episcopate he saw many people put to death for heresy, denying the king's supremacy, or on other pretences; among the more notable victims were Archbishop Cranmer, and Bishops Ridley and Latimer.
It was not long before the effects of Mary's reign were felt in Salisbury. The use of the 1552 Prayer Book was forbidden by the end of 1553, altars were restored, and the Mass was again said. On 24 July 1554 Queen Mary married Philip of Spain and within six months the first martyrs were burning. One of the Commission of Bishops appointed to persecute Protestants was the Bishop of Salisbury, John Capon. Having sent numerous well-known Protestants to the stake elsewhere in England, Capon did not hesitate to do the same to men of humble rank in his own Salisbury diocese. On 24 March 1556, three days after Archbishop Cranmer was burned, three men were burned at the stake in Salisbury. Their names were John Maundrell (a farmer), William Coberley (a tailor), and John Spicer (a stonemason). [6]
John Capon was a brother of William Capon, a former Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, whose bequest of £100 was instrumental in the founding of King Edward VI School, Southampton.
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Mary I, also known as Mary Tudor, and as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain as the wife of King Philip II from January 1556 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions.
Thomas Cranmer was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build the case for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which was one of the causes of the separation of the English Church from union with the Holy See. Along with Thomas Cromwell, he supported the principle of royal supremacy, in which the king was considered sovereign over the Church within his realm.
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William Capon (1480–1550) was an English Catholic priest and scholar.
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Events from the 1530s in England.
Events from the 1550s in England. This decade marks the beginning of the Elizabethan era.
The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. These events were part of the wider European Reformation, a religious and political movement that affected the practice of Christianity in Western and Central Europe.
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Richard Nykke became bishop of Norwich under Pope Alexander VI in 1515. Norwich at this time was the second-largest conurbation in England, after London.
Agnes Prest was a Cornish Protestant martyr from the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary. She was burned at the stake at Southernhay in Exeter in 1557.
James Basset (1526–1558) was a gentleman from the ancient Devonshire Basset family who became a servant of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, by whom he was nominated MP for Taunton in 1553, for Downton in 1554, both episcopal boroughs. He also served thrice as MP for Devon in 1554, 1555, and 1558. He was a strong adherent to the Catholic faith during the Reformation started by King Henry VIII. After the death of King Edward VI in 1553 and the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary I, he became a courtier to that queen as a gentleman of the Privy Chamber and received many favours from both herself and her consort King Philip II of Spain.
Thomas Benet from Cambridge, was an English Protestant martyr during the reign of King Henry VIII. In 1524, he moved to Torrington, North Devon, with his wife and family so that he could exercise his religious conscience more freely in a county where no one knew him. He was executed by burning on 15 January 1531, for heresy, at Livery Dole outside Exeter in Devon, under the supervision of Sir Thomas Dennis (c.1477-1561) of Holcombe Burnell, near Exeter, then Sheriff of Devon.
Dr Richard Gwent was a senior ecclesiastical jurist, pluralist cleric and administrator through the period of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. Of south Welsh origins, as a Doctor of both laws in the University of Oxford he rose swiftly to become Dean of the Arches and Archdeacon of London and of Brecon, and later of Huntingdon. He became an important figure in the operations of Thomas Cromwell, was a witness to Thomas Cranmer's private protestation on becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, and was Cranmer's Commissary and legal draftsman. He was an advocate on behalf of Katherine of Aragon in the proceedings against her, and helped to deliver the decree of annulment against Anne of Cleves.
Edward Crome was an English reformer and courtier.
John London, DCL was Warden of New College, Oxford, and a prominent figure in the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the reign of Henry VIII of England.