John_Bird_(bishop)

John Bird (bishop)

John Bird (bishop)

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John Bird (died 1558) was an English Carmelite friar and subsequently a bishop.

Arms: Sable a mace Or in bend surmounted of a pastoral staff in bend sinister Argent headed Or on a chief Argent three shovellers also Argent.[1]

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]

Life

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]

Notes

  1. [1]
    "The Armorial Bearings of the Bishops of Chester". Cheshire Heraldry Society. Retrieved 10 February 2021.
  2. [2]
    "Friaries: Carmelite friars of Coventry | British History Online".
  3. [3]
    Fr. Richard Copsey, O.Carm. "THE MEDIEVAL CARMELITE PRIORY AT YORK". carmelite.org. Archived from the original on 3 December 2020.
  4. [4]
    "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Ancient Diocese of Chester".
  5. [5]
    Cooper 1896.
  6. [6]
    Parish of Penrhudd in Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Wales and Monmouthshire: VII – County of Pembroke (Google Books)
  7. [7]
    Christopher Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (1975), pp. 7-10.
  8. [8]
    John Gough Nichols (ed.), The Diary of Henry Machyn, London, 1848, p. 58.
  9. [9]
     This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Bird, John (d.1558)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
Attribution

 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.

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