1. Thomas Bilson was an Anglican Bishop of Worcester and Bishop of Winchester.
23 Facts About Thomas Bilson
1. 2.
Thomas Bilson was educated at William of Wykeham's twin foundations of Winchester College and New College, Oxford.
3.
Thomas Bilson was made prebendary of Winchester, and headmaster of the college there until 1579 and warden from 1581 to 1596.
4.
Thomas Bilson engaged in most of the polemical contests of his day, as a stiff partisan of the Church of England.
5.
Anthony a Wood remarked that Queen Elizabeth employed Bilson to write the book, as a convenience to shelter, with the Dutch Protestants, from the influence of king Philip II of Spain, as much as to counter the Jesuits' attacks on Elizabeth I Glenn Burgess considered that, in The True Difference, Bilson showed a sense of the diversity of legitimate political systems.
6.
Thomas Bilson conceded nothing to popular sovereignty, but wrote that there were occasions when a king might forfeit his powers.
7.
Thomas Bilson maintained that Christ went to hell, not to suffer, but to wrest the keys of hell out of the Devil's hands.
8.
From another direction the Roman Catholic controversialist Richard Broughton attacked Anglican conformists through Thomas Bilson's views, writing in 1607.
9.
In 1596 Francis Langley built the Swan Theatre in Southwark, and it was in 1597 that Thomas Bilson became Bishop of Winchester.
10.
Thomas Bilson had in fact advised James in 1603 not to hold the Conference, and to leave religious matters to the professionals.
11.
Thomas Bilson bought the manor of West Mapledurham, near Petersfield, Hampshire, in 1605.
12.
Thomas Bilson was ex officio visitor of St John's College, Oxford, and so was called to intervene when in 1611 the election as president of William Laud was disputed, with a background tension of Calvinist versus Arminian.
13.
Thomas Bilson, taken to be on the Calvinist side, found that the election of the high-church Laud had failed to follow the college statutes.
14.
Thomas Bilson was appointed a judge in the 1613 annulment case of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex and his wife Frances nee Howard; with John Buckridge, bishop of Rochester, he was one of two extra judges added by the King to the original 10, who were deadlocked.
15.
Abbot felt that neither man was impartial, and that Thomas Bilson bore him an old grudge.
16.
Thomas Bilson played a key role in the outcome, turning away the Earl of Essex's appeal to appear a second time before the commission, and sending away Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton who was asking on behalf of Essex with a half-truth about the position.
17.
The outcome of the case was a divorce, and Thomas Bilson was then in favour with Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, a favourite in the court who proceeded to marry Frances.
18.
Bilson's son Sir Thomas Bilson was nicknamed "Sir Nullity Bilson", because his knighthood followed on the outcome of the Essex annulment case.
19.
Somerset had been importunate to the point of pushiness on behalf of Thomas Bilson, hoping to secure him a higher office, and had left Thomas Bilson in a false position and James very annoyed.
20.
Thomas Bilson died in 1616 and was buried in Westminster Abbey at the entrance to St Edmund's Chapel.
21.
Thomas Bilson is buried in plot 232 between the tombs of Richard II and Edward III.
22.
Thomas Bilson had argued for resistance to a Roman Catholic prince.
23.
Thomas Bilson's writings took a nuanced and middle way in ecclesiastical polity, and avoided Erastian views and divine right, while requiring passive obedience to authority depending on the context.