- Thomas Vavasour
Thomas Vavasour (b. about 1536-7; d. at
Kingston-upon-Hull ,2 May 1585 ) was an EnglishRoman Catholic physician, and pensioner ofSt. John's College, Cambridge .Life
On 25 June, 1549, at the disputations held before the king's commissioners at Cambridge, Vavasour was one of the disputants in favour of
Transubstantiation and theSacrifice of the Mass . He subsequently went toVenice , where he took the degree ofM.D. , and on 20 November 1556, he received a licence from theCollege of Physicians of London to practise for two years.His house was "by the common school house" in the city of
York ; there Mass was said in 1570. In 1572 he was accused of having entertainedEdmund Campion . In Nov., 1574, after he had been confined to his own house in the city of York for nearly nine months, he was sent into solitary confinement inHull Castle .Grindal describes him as "sophistical, disdainful, and illuding arguments with irrision, when he was not able to solute the same by learning", and adds that "his great anchor-hold was in urging the literal sense of "hoc est corpus meum", thereby to prove transubstantiation". By June, 1579, he was back again in his house, where Mass was again said.Later on he was in the
Gatehouse, Westminster , from which he was released on submitting to acknowledge theroyal supremacy in religious matters; but he was again imprisoned as arecusant in Hull Castle, York where he died. His wife, Dorothy, died in the New Counter,Ousebridge , York, 26 October, 1587.References
*
Strype , Cranmer, I (Oxford, 1840), 290;
*____, Parker, II (Oxford, 1821), 167;
*____, Grindal (Oxford, 1821), 273, 535;
*Cath. Rec. Soc. Publ. (London, 1905), II, 219; V, 193;
*FOLEY, Rec. Eng. Prov. S. J., III (London, 1877), 245-9, 809;
*DASENT, Acts of the Privy Council, XII (London, 1890-1907), 108;
*Calendar S. P. Dom. 1581-90 (London, 1865), 145;
*Calendar S. P. Dom. Add. 1566-79 (London, 1871), 224, 369;
*MUNK, Royal College of Physicians, I (London, 1878), 56.
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