17 Facts About Nicholas Shaxton

Nicholas Shaxton was elected a fellow of Gonville Hall in 1510.

Nicholas Shaxton is mentioned by John Strype among those propagators of new views who used to frequent the 'White Horse'.

From inquiries made at Cambridge he learned that the vice-chancellor had censured two points in a sermon which Shaxton had preached on Ash Wednesday: first, that it was wrong to assert publicly that there was no Purgatory, but not damnable to think so; and, secondly, that no man could be chaste by prayers or fasting unless God made him so.

Nicholas Shaxton had confessed that he had prayed at mass that the clergy might be relieved of celibacy.

In 1533 Nicholas Shaxton was presented by the king to the parish church of Fuggleston in Wiltshire, and was made treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral; his promotion was by the influence of Anne Boleyn, who appointed him her almoner; and next year Richard Sampson, dean of the Chapel Royal, agreed Thomas Cranmer's request that Nicholas Shaxton should preach before the king the third Sunday in Lent.

Nicholas Shaxton was regarded, alongside Hugh Latimer and William Barlow as one of the most well known new bishops of the 1530s.

Nicholas Shaxton desired Cromwell to write to the canons of his cathedral to exact no oath of him for his bishopric, as he received it only from the king.

Nicholas Shaxton's examiners were so far in sympathy with him that they all considered the practice unnecessary, but said it was not to be denounced as sin.

Nicholas Shaxton had further disputes with the municipal authorities, who claimed that the city was the king's city, while he maintained that by a grant of Edward IV it was the bishop's.

Nicholas Shaxton signed 'the bishops' book,' entitled The Institution of a Christian Man.

Nicholas Shaxton resigned his bishopric in 1539 because he opposed the King's Six Articles, for which he was imprisoned.

Nicholas Shaxton was one of the bishops who opposed the articles in parliament, till the king, as one of the lords present remarked, 'confounded them all with God's learning.

Nicholas Shaxton was desired, when he gave in his resignation, to keep it secret; but it soon became known, and he wrote to ask Cromwell whether he should dress like a priest or like a bishop.

Nicholas Shaxton held a parochial charge as curate at Hadleigh in Suffolk, and in the spring of 1546 was summoned to London to answer for maintaining false doctrine on the sacrament.

Nicholas Shaxton was then sent to Anne Askew to urge her to do likewise; but Bonner had already tried in vain to persuade her, and according to John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments she told Shaxton it would have been better for him that he had never been born.

Nicholas Shaxton was married, but now separated from his wife, giving her a pious exhortation in verse to live chaste and single.

Nicholas Shaxton desired to be buried in the chapel of Gonville Hall, and left to the hall his books, his house in St Andrew's parish in Cambridge, and some money.