John Stokesley

John Stokesley (c. 1475 – September 8, 1539), was an English church leader who was Bishop of London during the reign of Henry VIII.

He was born at Colly Weston in Northamptonshire, and became a fellow of Magdalen College in 1495, serving also as a lecturer. In 1498 he was made principal of Magdalen Hall, and in 1505 vice-president of Magdalen College. Soon after 1509 he was appointed a member of the royal council, and chaplain and almoner to Henry VIII; he attended Henry as his chaplain at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. In 1529 and 1530 he went to France and Italy as ambassador to Francis I and to gain opinions from foreign universities in favor of the king's divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

He became Bishop of London in 1530, and in September 1533 he christened the future Queen Elizabeth. His later years were troubled by disputes with Archbishop Cranmer; Stokesley opposed all changes in the doctrines of the church, remaining hostile to the English Bible and clerical marriage. He was very active in persecuting heretics.

Stokesley was a man of learning, writing in favor of Henry's divorce, and with Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, a treatise against Henry VIII's kinsman Cardinal Pole.

References

*1911