14 Facts About Edmund Bonner

Edmund Bonner was Bishop of London from 1539 to 1549 and again from 1553 to 1559.

John Strype printed an account, with many circumstantial details, stating that Bonner was the natural son of George Savage, rector of Davenham, Cheshire, and that his mother married Bonner only after the future bishop's birth.

Edmund Bonner was ordained about the same time and admitted doctor of civil law in 1525.

Edmund Bonner began his mission by sending Cromwell a long list of accusations against his predecessor.

Edmund Bonner was almost as bitter against Wyatt and Mason, whom he denounced as a "papist", and the violence of his conduct led Francis I to threaten him with a hundred strokes of the halberd.

Edmund Bonner seems to have pleased his patron, Cromwell, and perhaps Henry, by his energy in seeing the king's Great Bible in English through the press in Paris.

Edmund Bonner was already king's chaplain; his appointment at Paris had been accompanied by promotion to the See of Hereford but owing to his absence he could neither be consecrated nor take possession of his see, and he was still abroad when he was translated to the Bishopric of London.

Edmund Bonner had graduated in law, and not in theology.

Edmund Bonner began to doubt that supremacy when he saw to what uses it could be put by a Protestant council, and either he or Gardiner evolved the theory that the royal supremacy was in abeyance during a royal minority.

Edmund Bonner did so, but with such significant omissions in the matter which had been prescribed touching the king's authority, that after a seven days' trial he was deprived of his bishopric by an ecclesiastical court over which Cranmer presided, and sent as a prisoner to the Marshalsea.

Edmund Bonner was at once restored to his see, his deprivation being regarded as invalid and Ridley as an intruder.

Edmund Bonner vigorously restored Catholicism in his diocese, made no difficulty about submitting to the papal jurisdiction which he had foresworn.

Edmund Bonner's detractors, beginning with his Protestant contemporaries John Foxe and John Bale and continuing through most English historiography of the period, paint a different picture.

Edmund Bonner was attacked during life with a rare hatred which has followed him into the grave, so that in English history few names have been so execrated and vilified as his.