1. Cuthbert Tunstall was an English humanist, bishop, diplomat, administrator and royal adviser.
16 Facts About Cuthbert Tunstall
1. 2.
Cuthbert Tunstall was born in Hackforth near Bedale in North Yorkshire in 1474, illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Tunstall of Thurland Castle in Lancashire, who was later an esquire of the body of Richard III.
3.
Cuthbert Tunstall was admitted to Balliol College, Oxford around 1491, where he studied mathematics, theology, and law.
4.
Cuthbert Tunstall did not receive a degree from either Oxford or Cambridge; he graduated from the University of Padua in 1505 as a Doctor of Civil Law and a Doctor of Canon Law.
5.
Cuthbert Tunstall became a canon of Lincoln in 1514, and archdeacon of Chester in 1515.
6.
In 1515, Cuthbert Tunstall was sent to Flanders with Sir Thomas More, a friend since his school days, which More mentions in a glowing tribute in the opening paragraph of Utopia.
7.
Cuthbert Tunstall helped Erasmus make corrections to the second edition of his New Testament.
8.
Cuthbert Tunstall was made Master of the Rolls in 1516 and Dean of Salisbury in 1521.
9.
Cuthbert Tunstall met William Tyndale in 1523 seeking patronage to translate the Bible which Cuthbert Tunstall declined, saying he already funded several scholars.
10.
Unlike Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More, Cuthbert Tunstall adopted a policy of passive obedience and acquiescence regarding many matters for which he likely held little support during the troubled years following the English Reformation.
11.
Cuthbert Tunstall disliked the religious policy pursued by the advisers of King Edward VI and voted against the first Act of Uniformity in 1549.
12.
Cuthbert Tunstall assumed his office as Bishop of Durham once more.
13.
Cuthbert Tunstall maintained his earlier conciliatory approach, indulging in no systematic persecution of Protestants.
14.
Cuthbert Tunstall was one of eleven Roman Catholic bishops to die in custody during Elizabeth's reign.
15.
Cuthbert Tunstall was buried in the parish church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, now a deconsecrated building.
16.
Cuthbert Tunstall's long career of eighty-five years, for thirty-seven of which he was a bishop, is one of the most consistent and honourable in the sixteenth century.