Cuthbert Tunstall

Cuthbert Tunstall , 1474-1559, English bishop. After studying at Oxford, Cambridge, and Padua, he entered the church and was rapidly advanced. A friend of Thomas More and of Erasmus, Tunstall served Henry VIII on many diplomatic missions, held numerous positions in the church, and in 1530 succeeded Thomas Wolsey as bishop of Durham. Although Tunstall never gave up his belief in Roman Catholic dogma and although he wrote numerous tracts in Latin defending his beliefs, he adopted a policy of passive obedience to the ecclesiastical revolution of Henry VIII. He opposed the Protestant reforms, but after they had been passed he helped carry them out. He supported Henry's oath of supremacy, and in 1537 he was made president of the Council of the North. In Edward VI's reign he supported the protectorate of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset , and was imprisoned and deprived after Somerset's fall (1551). Restored to his bishopric at the accession of Mary (1553), he refrained from the persecution of Protestants, and there were no executions in his diocese. Tunstall refused to take the oath of supremacy when Elizabeth I came to the throne, and he was placed in the custody of the archbishop of Canterbury.

Tunstall, Cuthbert (1474–1559), Bp. of London (1522–30) and then of Durham. In the divorce of Henry VIII he was one of the counsel of the Queen. Subsequently he was sympathetic to Catholic doctrine, but lacked strength of purpose, first opposing the Royal Supremacy and then accepting it. Under Edward VI his position became more difficult and he was deprived of his bishopric in 1552; he was reinstated under Mary in 1554. On Elizabeth I's accession he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy and declined to consecrate M. Parker (1559). He was deprived of his see and kept a prisoner in Lambeth Palace.

Tunstall, Cuthbert (1474–1559). Bishop. Tunstall was a distinguished scholar and ecclesiastical statesman, whose religious balancing act, in a period of startling change, kept him in high office for almost the whole of his life. Of Lancashire gentry stock, he attended Balliol College, Oxford, before moving on to Cambridge and Padua. The patronage of Warham, to whom he was chancellor, brought him swift promotion. By 1522 he was bishop of London, in 1527 keeper of the privy seal, and much employed by Henry VIII on diplomatic missions. Though he disapproved of Henry's adoption of the headship of the church, Tunstall continued to serve. He succeeded Wolsey as bishop of Durham in 1530 and in 1537 became president of the Council of the North. He was out of sympathy with the reforms of Edward VI's reign and fell into disfavour on Somerset's overthrow, being deprived of his see in 1552. Mary restored him to it but he could not accept Elizabeth's Act of Supremacy and lost his bishopric once more in 1559, at the age of 85, a few weeks before his death.

J. A. Cannon