William Bishop (bishop)
William Bishop (c. 1553 – 13 April 1624) was the first Roman Catholic bishop in England after the Reformation, serving as Vicar Apostolic of England and titular Bishop of Chalcedon. Roman Catholicism had been banned in England in 1559. William Bishop was appointed bishop over the whole of England, Wales and Scotland in 1623. As Roman Catholicism was officially illegal in England at the time, he was given the titular see of Chalcedon in Asia Minor. He arrived in England secretly on 31 July 1623 at age 70 and had to walk 12 miles to find refuge. He identified and selected 20 archdeacons to take charge over geographical districts. He is not the only recorded Bishop Bishop. Life The son of John Bishop, who died in 1601 at the age of 92, he was born at Brailes in Warwickshire in or about 1554. He was sent to Gloucester Hall, Oxford aged 16 around 1570. After remaining there three or four years he settled his paternal estate, which was considerable, on his younger brother, and went over to the English College at Rheims, where he began his theological studies; he then spent time at Rome. He returned to Rheims, was ordained priest at Laon in May 1583, and was sent on the English mission. Arrested on his landing, he was taken before secretary Francis Walsingham and was imprisoned in the Marshalsea with other priests. Towards the close of the year 1584 he was released, and went to Paris, where he studied for several years at the Sorbonne, and was made a licentiate of divinity. He returned to England on the mission, 15 May 1591; after about two years he returned to Paris to complete the degree of D.D., and then came back to England. Bishop was drawn into the Archpriest Controversy between the secular and regular clergy. When a dispute arose between George Blackwell, the archpriest, and a number of his clergy, who appealed against him for maladministration and exceeding his commission, Bishop and John Charnock were sent to Rome by their brethren to remonstrate against him. On their arrival they were both taken into custody by order of Cardinal Henry Cajetan, the protector of the English nation, who had been informed that they were turbulent persons and the head of a factious party. They were confined in the English College, Rome under the inspection of Robert Parsons, a Jesuit. After a time they regained their liberty and returned to England. English Catholics in the new King James's reign were faced by a novel oath of allegiance. In the subsequent troubles Bishop was committed to the Gatehouse Prison; he and twelve other priests had declared civil allegiance, published by them in the last year of Queen Elizabeth's reign. He was examined on 4 May 1611, when he said he was opposed to the Jesuits, but declined to take the oath of allegiance, as Blackwell and others had done, because he wished to uphold the credit of the secular priests at Rome,